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| 1250854121
| 9781250854124
| B09G14BQMM
| 4.34
| 44,968
| Sep 13, 2022
| Sep 13, 2022
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it was amazing
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Originally read via ebook, then ‘reread’ via audiobook. This book has no right being as good as it is, considering it started off as Muir writing Alec
Originally read via ebook, then ‘reread’ via audiobook. This book has no right being as good as it is, considering it started off as Muir writing Alecto the Ninth, then the plot spiraling out of control and splitting into two books, turning the Locked Tomb trilogy into a quartet. Which might seem like this is at risk of seeming overpadded or stuffed or the narrative becoming too meandering (cough, GRRM), but I loved every minute of Nona and would have gladly taken more. I thought I would desperately miss the previous protagonists, but Nona herself is so effortlessly endearing as a lead, her voice just sparkling off the page, and my heart was so constantly warmed over her found family; a set of characters I never expected to see again in this much depth, and never expected for them to cobble together this ragtag group the way that they do. The identity of Nona herself is a core spoiler, but I love the twists and turns it takes, the hints sprinkled throughout. Also hints of characters we’ve met before, like Crown and the Captain. I love getting to see the inner workings of the Blood of Eden, plus a view outside the Empire. The worldbuilding scope has been expanding further and further with each book, and now we finally get to learn more about what people are like outside the Nine Houses — which is so fascinating to see a glimpse of a place where necromancers are notthe norm, and we see an average civilian’s absolute fear and revulsion for necromancers and Lyctors; we also see the way the common people have been suffering from the resettlements, the planet-killing. The Empire has been so normalised in the first two books that it’s been easy to not even realise its impact or how it grinds people underfoot, so it’s so great finally getting to see it from the ground view here, so to speak. And! Then! There’s the alternating chapters fleshing out the Emperor’s backstory and how the apocalypse happened, which is such absolutely important context — even as it’s delivered by an unreliable narrator — and I’m so, so pleased to see more from the original crew, the long-gone Lyctors, my faves. These alternating chapters are also much easier to follow than the ones in HtN. There’s so many details in this book that reward a reread, and Moira Quirk’s narration remains, as always, sheer perfection. I highly recommend checking out episode 22 of the Locked Tomb Podcast, where the hosts interview Quirk and she talks about her process narrating these books, which is great. This series is increasingly occupying a really special place in my heart and I just like it more and more as time goes on. I mainlined this book in only a couple days’ reading the first time, and this book made me bawl with feelings over its characters. I got a Sixth House-themed tattoo a few days ago. Like, I’m in deep, and I fully admit how very biased I am about these books now. But it remains such a clever, funny, feelsy puzzle-box of a series, and I absolutely cannot wait to see where it all goes in Alecto. ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Sep 24, 2022
Mar 04, 2022
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Nov 19, 2022
Mar 07, 2022
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Sep 25, 2022
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Kindle Edition
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| 4.17
| 293,769
| Aug 23, 2022
| Aug 23, 2022
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it was amazing
| That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’r That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands. Ohhhh man. This book has gotten so much hype, but in this instance, it’s entirely deserved. The marketing comparison is “a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell”, but for once, those comparisons are the exact ones I had in mind while I was reading the book and before I even read the blurb. It has the warm witty humour and worldbuilding and scholarly footnotes of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, plus the way it mingles real-life history with magic; yet there’s also the close-knit, tangled, bitter relationships of The Secret History, where the all-consuming love and complication within this cohort of brilliant students all feels tremendously earned; plus, all while the book is also ferociously anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist, and pro-union. And, y’know, beautifully written! The gist: Our protagonist, Robin Swift, is plucked from Canton by a wealthy English benefactor to be taken to England and trained in languages, where he’s set to study translation at Oxford. This is a world where magic functions through the act of translation, with words engraved on silver bricks – which means the Institute of Translation filches children from abroad to utilise their facility with other languages, to train them in magic, to eventually funnel ever more power and resources back to the British Empire. The first half of the book is somewhat slow and sedate, as it’s introducing you to our main character, our cast of characters, the eventual setting of Babel at Oxford, the ebb-and-flow of their studies, but it’s all necessary buildup to make the emotional payoff worth it. And then at around the halfway point, Kuang slams the pedal to the metal and the pace becomes unrelenting, terrifying, a wild ride to the finish — which left me silently crying at the ending, just utterly bereft. This book does not pull its punches!! There’s such a varied and diverse set of characters, too, with their different backgrounds and class struggles and their varying relationships to language, to diaspora, to home, to racism and colourism and sexism and allyship. Even when certain characters are extremely frustrating, their behaviour is still incredibly realistic. And speaking as a mixed-race Asian reader, and as someone who’s been shouted at and had things thrown at me for not speaking the local language, and who has cried for hours because I lost too much of my Norwegian and I felt too clumsy, tongue-tied, stilted, paralysed trying to recapture some essence of the language that I had lost — this book just hit so fucking hard. The character of Griffin, in particular, destroyed me, and I’m not even going to say why, but oh my heart, my heart. Just flat-out 5 stars, and one of my two favourite books of the whole year. Also extremely fitting: The HarperCollins union has been on strike for livable wages since the very day I first started reading this book, and I wound up unexpectedly verklempt just about Babel’s themes of justice, of solidarity between classes, of unions — and, of course, as evidenced by the very subtitle of the book, the necessity of violence. Every time I started thinking the book might go softer, it went hard instead, and I respect the hell out of it for it. RF Kuang has been extremely vocal and active in her support of the strike, despite HarperCollins being her publisher for this book(!). If you’d like to support them, purchases from https://bookshop.org/shop/hcpunion will benefit the union hardship fund, and you can also buy Babel there. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 10, 2022
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Dec 23, 2022
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Jun 21, 2022
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Hardcover
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| B000FCKH1U
| 3.91
| 2,284
| Feb 2004
| Mar 17, 2009
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really liked it
| “The Frankland woman says humans have discovered other aliens since our mission left Earth, but it’s not aliens that bring them here. It’s the planet. “The Frankland woman says humans have discovered other aliens since our mission left Earth, but it’s not aliens that bring them here. It’s the planet.” Oh gosh, this book -- about an expedition sent to investigate a missing colony on a distant planet, only to wind up embroiled in an alien situation above their paygrade -- really hit the spot in terms of things that I love in space opera. First contact that isn't easy, where the relations are rife with misunderstandings and accidental offense, people wrestling with culture shock and political dynamics they don't understand. Seeing an uneasy balance between human military and civilian forces, these researchers and scientists sent to study an alien planet (and the makeup of the team reminded me of Prometheus; although these scientists weren't quite as stupid as that, although it was sometimes close). In terms of the crew's one-way trip to a faraway planet and needing to leave everything they know behind, it reminded me of Mass Effect: Andromeda. I also enjoyed seeing the aliens' distaste for humans -- calling us gethes, carrion-eaters -- and the fact that mankind weren't the colonisers for once, nor even fighting ineffable space horrors. They are simply out of their depth, foolish and inadequate, and struggling to unwire their innate assumption that we're the powerful conquerors. Now the boot's on the other foot, and we're the ones under the heel of a more powerful and more civilised civilisation. There's rich character work mostly with Shan Frankland and Aras, their alien ambassador (who I loved!! in all his bluntness and diplomacy and understanding and also loneliness). I also really dug Lindsay Neville, the female commander of the military detachment, and the way she and Shan grow from antagonism to becoming friends and trusting each other (more female friendships in fiction please!!). Mostly, this story is about environmentalism & conservation. The long picture, safeguarding the future, and not razing nature in our wake. Lessons that mankind needs to learn. But also: it's about loneliness, isolation, and striving for connection between people. I enjoyed this picture of the future, a high-tech sort-of-dystopia suffering under corporatocracies and big business -- especially since Shan is so tired of it. She's ready to retire, to get away from it all; she hates humans as much as the aliens could hate us, because she's seen too much of us and knows our worst sides. The Suppressed Briefing is also such a great touch, in which even our protagonist doesn't entirely know what she's doing either, until her subliminal mission brief comes back to her. The alien species are also great: there is one particular scene that got me in my heart and where I immediately burst into tears over them!! All-in-all, the book is fairly slow, unfolding in a pretty thoughtful manner as Shan and her expedition ease their way into the colony and try to wrangle an unexpected collision between cultures. It took me 9 days to read with my still stupidly-addled pandemic-brain, but it didn't feel long: I was actively excited to get back to City of Pearl and kept stealing five minutes here and there to read, which was a sign of how into it I was. Stoked to read the rest of the series. 4.5 stars. A slight off-the-page warning: The friend who recced this book also warned me that Karen Traviss has taken an anti-immigrant, transphobic, anti-LGBTQ stance on Twitter in recent years (although her account is now cleaned-out) -- which is incredibly disappointing and even surprising, considering how inclusive and progressive this book feels. There's a diverse set of characters, an extremely strong environmentalism theme throughout, a nod to queerness, there's undermining of 'traditional' gender roles and expectations with Shan's gruff take-no-shit demeanour; with the tough-as-nails commander becoming pregnant; and Ade Bennett, the ~macho marine~ except that you see him panic, vomit, and soil himself during a crisis. So. Obviously, every reader has to make the decision themselves in a case-by-case basis, and in this instance, I'm able to separate the author from the art because her views don't seep into this 17-year-old book; in fact, those views seems to run contradictory to the book itself and its far-better messages. So I still really enjoyed this! But I did feel it worth mentioning regardless. ...more |
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1
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Feb 16, 2021
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Feb 25, 2021
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Feb 16, 2021
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Kindle Edition
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| 4.07
| 1,084,431
| May 14, 2019
| May 14, 2019
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it was amazing
| This [NDA] seems... excessive, like the kind of paperwork you get from some perverted millionaire who wants to hunt you for sport. He wonders what the This [NDA] seems... excessive, like the kind of paperwork you get from some perverted millionaire who wants to hunt you for sport. He wonders what the most mind-numbingly wholesome public figure on earth could possibly have to hide. He hopes it's not people-hunting. My friends have been singing the praises of this book, and dangit but it was just as good as they said, and a great way to round out my possibly-last read of the year. It has warm witty prose with fun and genuinely funny dialogue (which is a pretty rare thing), wonderful familial relationships and depictions of supportive friendships, and lots of wrestling with sexual identity, racism/classism issues, legacy, and kicking the world in the teeth with progressiveness. It's an unlikely romance between two political rivals who have to pretend to be friends: the picture-perfect Prince Henry of the United Kingdom and Alex Claremont-Diaz, the half-Mexican son of the United States' first female president. Which, as you might be able to tell, counts as shots fired in the very premise itself: it might sound relentlessly feelgood but it's never too sappy or twee, and is grounded with a streak of practicality and painful real-world considerations even while it's loaded full of heart. It isn't an easy road, and the characters do struggle with their paths while also never taking themselves too seriously: I just loved spending time with them, and their family and friends, and following the lightning-sharp chemistry between everyone. I truly can't describe it better than the author herself does, in the acknowledgments at the end of the book: For months after November [2016], I gave up on writing this book. Suddenly what was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek parallel universe needed to be escapist, trauma-soothing, alternate-but-realistic reality. Not a perfect world -- one still believably fucked up, just a little better, a little more optimistic. I wasn't sure I was up to the task. I hoped I was. And, happy to say, but she succeeded utterly. I was in happy tears by the end of the book, struck sideways by so many touching moments, and it filled up my heart and soothed me. I feel like we should all read this before the next election, just for a pick-me-up. I'm super impressed with this debut, and excited to read whatever McQuiston writes next. ...more |
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1
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Dec 25, 2019
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Dec 30, 2019
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Dec 06, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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| 4.21
| 151,984
| Sep 10, 2019
| Sep 10, 2019
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it was amazing
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FIRST REVIEW / JUNE 21, 2020 Aiglamene had found and reforged the sword of Ortus's grandmother's mother, and presented it to a nonplussed Gideon. The bFIRST REVIEW / JUNE 21, 2020 Aiglamene had found and reforged the sword of Ortus's grandmother's mother, and presented it to a nonplussed Gideon. The blade was black metal, and it had a plain black guard and hilt, unlike the intricate messes of teeth and wires that adorned some of the other rapiers down at the monument. "Oh, this is boring," Gideon had said in disappointment. "I wanted one with a skull puking another, smaller skull, and other skulls flying all around. But tasteful, you know?" Quarantine has me absolutely useless in terms of reading lately, but Gideon the Ninth finally cracked through that mental block a bit, and I absolutely loved this. Read as a Best Novel nominee for the Hugo Awards, and it's already a strong contender for my vote (alongside The Light Brigade which was also a clear-cut 5-star read from me). Gosh, just, what a stunning debut: Muir has absolutely lavish prose and description and fascinating worldbuilding, feat. gothic lesbian necromancers in space (!!!). The voice is off-kilter in a fantastic way, the way it seesaws between the ornate formal setting combined with Gideon's punchy sense of humour and loose, informal voice, which often had me laughing out loud. She's just a delight to spend time with, scrappy and funny and with such a big heart, and it's great seeing her and Harrow's relationship slooooowly develop over the course of the whole novel (do I love me some well-done enemies-to-friends tropes? yes YES I DO!!!). There's such great sense of place and setting: the Ninth House itself is spooky and gothic and decaying (perhaps something a bit like Gormenghast, from my vague impressions of that book's Vibe), and Canaan House is wonderful: a cliffside manor that seems bigger on the inside, all mouldering grandeur and filled with mysteries as the heirs of all the noble necromantic houses are sent to solve a challenge in order to ascend to greater power. In this way, I'm actually reminded of the best parts of (ugh) the Tri-Wizard Tournament, or even The Hunger Games: I just love when you assemble a bunch of asshole cutthroat rivals in one spot and set them loose to compete against each other!! And so of course, there's murder mysteries, competitive rivals, and bones. So many bones. The Ninth House's necromancy specialises in bone magic, but each house has their own specialty, from psychometry to medicine to war to spirituality and the state of the soul. Honestly my only quibble about the book is that, with eight different houses represented, each with a necromancer and their knightly cavalier, there are a lot of characters to meet all at once, and I didn't start getting them straight until fairly late in the book, and I actually had to draw some character doodles and take some notes to remember who's who. By the end, though, I grew so attached to many of them and even wound up with some absolute faves (Palamedes and Camilla) who I liked as much as I did Gideon and Harrow. Late in the game, Gideon the Ninth also hammers on some hard body horror, all gross viscera and biological magic, but I love that stuffff. I predicted some aspects of the plot but other elements caught me completely off-guard, the ending is super cinematic and feelsy, and sets everything up so nicely for the sequel. MY BODY IS SO READY FOR THE SEQUEL. --------------------------------- SECOND REVIEW / AUG 5, 2021 I've been meaning to reread this book in the wake of Harrow the Ninth; originally I was going to hold off and then do a two-book reread right before Alecto, but with the news that we're getting Nona the Ninth and Alecto is postponed even further, I just threw everything out the window and decided to reread it now, just as a little treat for myself. I 'reread' this via listening to the audiobook, which, honestly, was a fantastic way to re-experience this book. Moira Quirk's narration is absolutely fantastic: she nails the tongue-in-cheek, witty language so well, and her emotiveness and different voices for each character are chock-full of personality and you can easily tell who's who. Her Gideon is SO HILARIOUS, but so is her Harrow, her Palamedes and Cam, her Teacher, everyone in the Second, everyone in the Third... everyone! just everyone! Now that I was more familiar with all the characters, her varied voices really helped me get even clearer mental images of each of them. The reread was also rewarding because Muir is so, so good at dropping hints and foreshadowing and tiny details that you overlook the first time, but with the added knowledge from later in the series, it makes you wanna yell and throw the book across the room. I can't even count the number of times I paused, rolled it back, and sent a specific quote to a friend, shrieking. I had some surprising emotional reactions on my reread, too; quotes that were hilarious the first time made me unexpectedly burst into tears this time around, probably due to a heightened awareness of how tragicomic the context is. And, really, that just sums up this book so well: the way the tone balances between tragedy and comedy and body horror and the gothic. Just, still great stuff. Am I inevitably going to read this a third dang time when we get to Nona the Ninth in 2022? Probably! And I have zero regrets! I live here in full Locked Tomb brainrot now, and I accept my fate. ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Aug 04, 2021
Jun 15, 2020
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Aug 15, 2021
Jun 21, 2020
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Aug 24, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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| 125014227X
| 9781250142276
| B07C25Z679
| 4.16
| 213,658
| Jan 29, 2019
| Jan 29, 2019
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really liked it
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4 stars! The first of the Nikolai spinoff duology, which is pretty much as good as everyone told me it was. Everything set in Ravka, with Nikolai and
4 stars! The first of the Nikolai spinoff duology, which is pretty much as good as everyone told me it was. Everything set in Ravka, with Nikolai and Zoya and Isaak (I love him!!), is fantastic imo: I was totally here for the Grisha Triumvirate, the growing trust and collaboration between this group of people who have been through war and hell together, and seeing the hard work of keeping this disastrous country running. Nikolai wrestling with the repercussions from the main Grisha trilogy, picking up the shattered pieces of Ravka and trying to find a way to make it work (I love him so much! I love his dynamic with Zoya so much! NEVER HAVE I STARTED SHIPPING SOMETHING SO FAST). The narrative did slow down once the two of them go on their pilgrimage and are separated from the rest of the characters, but I even still loved everything set within that strange limbo: the worldbuilding implications, the way it overturns our understanding of magic in this universe, the way Zoya learns and grows and faces her demons throughout it. Nina’s arc is… messier, in that it doesn’t tie into the rest of the plot at all, and so it does wind up feeling kind of… pointless? It started off strong, as a really aching, great exploration of her grief from the fallout of Crooked Kingdom, with two chapters in particular that just rendered me into helpless sobbing on the futon ((view spoiler)[the funeral! Trassel!! (hide spoiler)] and I loved her initial story: this plumbing into her characterisation & development, seeing her trying to find new meaning in her life, a cause to fight for, and coming to terms with her new abilities. Buuuuut then we’re introduced to her new love interest, and considering how much I loved Matthias with every ounce of my being in the prior books, I really bounced hard off this one considering it ratchets up way too fast — Nina literally starts hitting on them and swooning over them within like 5 minutes after (view spoiler)[literally burying her previous lover!! (hide spoiler)] And the thematic ground is surprisingly dully repetitive, too, considering: (view spoiler)[we’ve now seen both of Nina’s love interests have Jarl Brum as a surrogate father figure/actual father figure, and them having to learn that he's a Bad Man, and then learn to reject said Bad Man, while tenderly touching his unconscious face. Like, why??? I was utterly unaffected by Hanne’s revelation because we’d already seen that exact revelation about Brum happen in Six of Crows, with a character I was far more attached to. And I’m not against Nina eventually moving on and finding love again, but ugh I was just so annoyed at it happening within 5 minutes of burying his corpse. My slow-burn heart was straight-up irritated through most of it, and wishing that they could’ve grown to be friends first before jumping straight to admiring her calves and flirting and “US AGAINST THE WORLD” heart-clutching after only spending about 3 days together. And like, I get that Nina’s naturally a flirt, but idk, she was also such a broken shell of a woman for the beginning of the book that her immediate 180 upon meeting Hanne felt really unnatural. It also would've ground on my nerves less if Hanne was, say, a self-hating Grisha from literally any other nation that Nina takes under her wing — but having her be Fjerdan, on top of the Brum connection, just makes it feel so....... Matthias 2.0 and that bothers me. (hide spoiler)] So, I had those v specific gripes! The book as a whole is a little uneven between the two main arcs that it’s juggling, and in how Nina’s path feels more tangential to the rest. And don’t get me wrong, I love Nina, she’s one of my favourite characters in this series, but I often found myself dragging my heels a little during her chapters and yearning to get back to Nikolai and Zoya, who are the real stars here, the ones who matter most (to the extent that Zoya might even be the main character of this book, more than Nikolai, which might also be a little uneven focus-wise but I ADORE ZOYA SO NO COMPLAINTS ON MY END TBH). 5 stars for Nikolai & Zoya & Isaak, but one star dropped for Nina’s plotline, unforts. Also, unlike Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom, I think you definitely can't read this spinoff as a standalone — it's really, really heavily influenced by and picking up the threads from both previous series. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 2021
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May 14, 2021
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Jun 18, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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| 1534308377
| 9781534308374
| 1534308377
| 4.56
| 32,773
| Sep 26, 2018
| Oct 02, 2018
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it was amazing
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Very few comic books — or even books! — have the ability to make me screech “WHAT?!??” out loud, or audibly gasp while reading, both of which I did du
Very few comic books — or even books! — have the ability to make me screech “WHAT?!??” out loud, or audibly gasp while reading, both of which I did during this volume! I also burst into sudden tears during this volume!! (I won’t say when, because uhh spoilers.) It’s not even so much the pure basic fact of what happens, but it’s Hazel’s ever-present, backwards-looking, poignant narration. It’s the times when the writing has the restraint to just pull back and be completely wordless & silent, and just show you little visual snapshots instead. Saga is, as always, the constant question of parenting and making the right choices for your child, and revenge and violence and whether or not you choose to enact violence. It’s an expansion on all the ragtag found family that have assembled by now; Squire and Hazel’s shared childhood together, especially, is one of my favourite things. And I kept occasionally having moments to be gobsmacked at how Hazel is so big now! She was so itty bitty at the start of this series! I love the slow, patient passing of time here. But, ow. This book. I’m just gonna quote my friend Ben's review tbh: Saga, Volume 9 takes any of the good, happy feelings you got at the end of the last volume and tears them to shreds, lights those shreds on fire, then scatters the ashes of those shreds to the four corners of the globe. Then it cancels your Netflix subscription and steals your identity, using that to go on a crime spree. Just for good measure. Everything hurts. It is still very good, and I’m not one of those people going “FUCK THIS SERIES!!” after this volume, but still — ow. ...more |
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1
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Feb 17, 2019
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Feb 17, 2019
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Feb 26, 2018
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Paperback
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| 0062568469
| 9780062568465
| 0062568469
| 4.08
| 8,115
| Sep 17, 2017
| Sep 19, 2017
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really liked it
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This review is the one that made me instantly hold this book at the library, so like, just go read that. Other people have more eloquently reviewed th
This review is the one that made me instantly hold this book at the library, so like, just go read that. Other people have more eloquently reviewed this book, but I'll give it a try: David Litt was one of the young speechwriters working for President Obama (in the same vein of the Pod Saves America crew, like Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett), specialising in comedy, and this book covers his career and his years in the White House. It could have been excruciating: it could have been a white guy in his late 20s patting himself on the back and getting overly-schmaltzy about ~*history*~ and his place in it. But it's not. It's got the right level of self-deprecating self-awareness, the way Litt skewers himself, and even makes fun of the sort of self-important revisionism that occurs in many memoirs. Instead he's blunt and honest about his screw-ups, his impostor syndrome, being a terrified youth who was at first a too-idealistic Obamabot, then slowly becoming more realistic while still not giving up his kernel of hope and faith in his administration. It's interesting getting a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how speeches are made, how the White House is run, and the background to some of the viral government videos and Correspondence Dinners that Litt had a part in. Plus Litt is genuinely funny -- I burst into hysterical giggles several times, like the description of his first time meeting the President: The president was standing up, so we stood up. He sat down, so we sat down. He looked at the camera, but before he could begin taping, Hope stopped him. “Mr. President, this is David,” she said. “This is the first video he’s ever written for you.” And yet in addition to being tongue-in-cheek and funny, it's also poignant, in the hard-won victories and the causes that mattered to Obama's administration. This book is realistic about the fact that presidents are just human, they are never going to be perfect -- but we were truly lucky in the eight years that we had with this one. Revisiting the Obama presidency is extra-poignant now, in ye dark days of Trump, and it is oddly therapeutic to look back on a White House that was competent, well-intentioned, and cared about minorities, immigrants, the climate, and the LGBTQ community. I won't lie: I burst into tears twice during the closing chapters of this book. But it ends with just the right note: oddly hopeful, oddly pragmatic, with an eye towards the future and the notion that it may be tough, but we will get through this. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 15, 2017
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Dec 19, 2017
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Oct 10, 2017
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ebook
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| 1501175564
| 9781501175565
| 1501175564
| 3.93
| 60,113
| Sep 12, 2017
| Sep 12, 2017
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it was amazing
| But her emails! —the internet, 2017 I laughed out loud at the above quote, and a few other times throughout: HRC is warm and wryly funny, peeling back But her emails! —the internet, 2017 I laughed out loud at the above quote, and a few other times throughout: HRC is warm and wryly funny, peeling back the curtain to offer an intimate look inside her head and that wild tumultuous year of 2016. It's an explanation offered to everyone who thought she was too cold, too unsympathetic (though I was never one of them). And I put off reading it for several months, because I just didn't feel emotionally ready yet -- and the way it begins with the searing pain of Inauguration Day and then rewinding to the hopefulness of the campaign, eventually reaching the trauma of election day... well. It's a little heartbreaking. When she lays out what her immediate priorities would have been, it was a bittersweet look into this alternate universe of what might have happened if she'd won; a competent president who would protect immigrants and women and healthcare and the environment, raise taxes on the wealthy, invest in cyber-security, and stand up to Putin. We could have had someone so clever and erudite and well-read and genuinely caring, who values kindness rather than bullying, who takes the time to make her staffers feel appreciated, who concentrates on policy and doing the job right. The fact that we came so damned close only to be stymied by Comey's letter is infuriating. As more madness plays out each day (writing this review in February 2018), I just keep wondering what the history books will make of this period. The chapter about police brutality & gun violence was especially gutting, and I loved Hillary's insights to the difficulty of being a woman in a male-dominated field and male-privileged world. It was great seeing those flashes of sympathetic anger, seeing behind some of that perfect composure and the gritted teeth, knowing how much she had to be that reserved figure in order to not just be dismissed as a hysterical shrill emotional woman. (I mean, I already knew how she wound up where she is, but hearing it in her own words is lovely. But also -- I have never seen her as cold? To me, she always seemed warm and kind. I don't know if this is a difference in how women perceive her vs. men, or what.) And the initial reception of this book, people saying that it's all just blame-shifting and making excuses, is also incorrect -- Hillary's very, very open and honest about what she thinks her flaws and her campaign's faults were, and doesn't shy away from accepting personal responsibility. In fact, she does so constantly. But it's also a fair accounting of all the factors that were stacked against her, that all combined to tip us over into a devastating loss, the hypocritical double standards to which she was always held. It hurts, seeing her honest pain and how she basically has to remind people that she is a real live human being, and that it hurts to be torn apart, and her questioning if anyone even wants to see her face again after this. There is a unique kind of excoriation reserved for women who dare to put themselves in the spotlight. It isn't just Hillary; we've seen it in GamerGate, in the #MeToo movement, in the suffragette movement. Unfortunately I don't think this book would change the minds of anyone who already doesn't like her, because people just seem to go weirdly bonkers when it comes to Hillary Rodham Clinton and not giving her a fair chance. I think back to the false equivalencies and double standards of the election and I'm just furious. Hopefully she's paved the path further, so that whoever comes after her won't have to walk quite such a hard road. But the book also ends with a touch of hope and looking towards the future, and reminding us all to be kind and take care of one another and resist and persist, and so I'll just leave it with that: I'm still with her. Something I wish every man across America understood is how much fear accompanies women throughout our lives. So many of us have been threatened or harmed. So many of us have helped friends recover from a traumatic incident. It’s difficult to convey what all this violence does to us. It adds up in our hearts and our nervous systems....more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 05, 2018
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Feb 12, 2018
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Sep 12, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 1534300600
| 9781534300606
| 1534300600
| 4.48
| 46,461
| Apr 04, 2017
| Apr 04, 2017
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really liked it
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Goddamnit, my heart. This one was even more tragic and painful than usual. 4.5 stars, can't quite decide whether to round up or down. Saga remains smar Goddamnit, my heart. This one was even more tragic and painful than usual. 4.5 stars, can't quite decide whether to round up or down. Saga remains smart, funny, deeply inventive, gorgeously-drawn, poignant, and absolutely heartwrenching. There's not much more I can say here that I haven't already said about the previous six volumes. Just, read this series. ...more |
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Oct 15, 2017
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Oct 15, 2017
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Aug 25, 2017
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Paperback
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| B0117K9N3Q
| 4.59
| 686,184
| Sep 27, 2016
| Sep 27, 2016
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it was amazing
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FIRST REVIEW / SEPTEMBER 13, 2017 The crew from Six of Crows is back to rescue one of their group, and they eventually wind up in gigantic sprawling tr FIRST REVIEW / SEPTEMBER 13, 2017 The crew from Six of Crows is back to rescue one of their group, and they eventually wind up in gigantic sprawling trouble that consumes the entire city of Ketterdam itself. Six of Crows had a better, tighter plot — I’m actually a little hard-pressed to describe to others what even happens in this one, because each shifting scheme changes, morphs, goes wrong, then readjusts. There’s no single driving force like the Ice Palace job was, because the goalposts keep moving and the target keeps changing. Which is not to say that it’s bad: in fact, this book even has a higher emotional impact because you have more attachment to the characters by now, and thus the stakes are higher. The ending had me fighting back tears in public, so I feel it deserves to be on my reader-i-wept bookshelf even if, like, tears didn’t actively roll down my face. So, the twisty windy plot was a little hard to follow at times, but gosh, I just love these characters so much. Every satisfying emotional beat is hit, everything is tied up in a neat bow, and the book races towards its tidy denouement. It’s refreshing to see more duologies tbh, because I feel like they can trim the fat and not suffer the lagging pace of trilogies and their middle books. Apparently I have loved every single heist book I’ve read so far, and this series delivered. Plus: ALL THE FOUND FAMILY FEELS. It’s also so crazily cinematic (with bonkers action and Cool Quips™) that I really just want there to be movie adaptations of these two books immediately. The one thing I want to mention: I feeeeel like someone once recced this series to me as an example of a main character who’s a ~terrible person~ and a dark character? But Kaz is like… all squish. All of his most brutal moments (e.g. torturing another criminal for revenge & leaving a wind-up key in their throat) either happened off-screen/in the past, or are empty threats that he makes for bluster but doesn’t follow through on. He has Emotionally Stunted Asshole moments, but you can tell that it’s a flinty shell made to protect his own deeply vulnerable feelings. For main characters who are truly despicable, see Surface Detail or The Wasp Factory (which… ironically, are both written by Iain Banks, gdi he’s just really good at that). --------------------------------- SECOND REVIEW / APRIL 27, 2021 I actually don't have that much to add to my previous review: I still love this with every fiber of my being, and my attachment to the Crows is even stronger on a reread. Everything is tied off in such neat, tidy bows, but it's a hard road for them to get there and pull it off. This book also took me 4 times as long to read compared to the first time, when rereads normally go faster for me — but I think it's because I simply wasn't ready for it to end, and I knew that ending gutpunch was coming and I kept dragging my heels, not wanting to suffer again. My heart. 4.5 stars, rounded up. ...more |
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Apr 14, 2021
Sep 10, 2017
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Apr 27, 2021
Sep 13, 2017
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Jul 26, 2017
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Kindle Edition
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| 0670021873
| 9780670021871
| 0670021873
| 4.00
| 125,363
| Jul 13, 2010
| Jul 13, 2010
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it was amazing
| One of the many differences between Murder and Undercover is our attitudes to subtlety. Undercovers are even better at it than you think, and when we One of the many differences between Murder and Undercover is our attitudes to subtlety. Undercovers are even better at it than you think, and when we feel like a giggle we do love watching the Murder boys loving their entrances. These two swung around the corner in an unmarked silver BMW that didn’t need markings, braked hard, left the car at a dramatic angle, slammed their doors in sync—they had probably been practicing—and swaggered off towards Number 16 with the music from Hawaii Five-0 blasting through their heads in full surround sound. I tore through this book in only a few days, as I always have done with Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series (they are SO ADDICTIVE!!); except that I'm also trying to strictly ration myself and not run out of books too soon, because dear god, I love them too much. Every time I grow a bit disillusioned with prose, start forgetting what lovely writing looks like, I need an infusion of French to remind myself how dizzying and gorgeous writing can be. Frank Mackey, especially, is a character so far up my alley it's ridiculous: a hardbitten cynical middle-aged divorcee detective with a soft spot a mile wide for his daughter. I read this quote in another book, but the writer Elizabeth Stone says that having a child is like deciding to have your heart go walking around outside your body; which is what I think of when it comes to Frank & Holly. He's all sharp edges and mouthy self-defense and emotional walls for days... except for when it comes to his daughter. He (and his family) are such goddamn vivid characters, and I love his wry, shittalking narration and everyone's tangledy melodic Irish brogues, which seeps through the text. Tana French's sense of place & setting is, as always, so rich and evocative; Faithful Place and the Liberties in Dublin come to full life, this claustrophobic homey neighbourhood where everyone's all on top of each other, the tight-knit toxic bonds of family and society, gossip and tribalism and the way they clot together during times of trouble. I love Frank's cunning, calculating efforts to work his way back in and to be seen as 'one of us' rather than a copper, even after twenty years away, estranged from his family. It's fascinating watching him work; courtesy his work in Undercover plus growing up in the household he did, how much of his behaviour is a manipulative act spun a particular way to elicit the response he wants. He's a bit of a mess, but not as much as e.g. Rob Ryan of In the Woods, and still cruelly efficient; you can see how Frank was the tether trying to hold Cassie Maddox in place during The Likeness. I've filed this book under both 'parent child feelings' and 'sibling feelings', because the Mackeys are such a feelsy punch to the gut: the siblings' effortless synchronicity, the way they grew up like a well-oiled machine handling their alcoholic father, the way they can all hurt each other best, the shadows of domestic & emotional abuse and alcoholism. The way you can see how it's forged Frank into the person he is today, the damage he's been carrying his whole life, before the events of this book are like watching a bomb going off. It's also refreshing because in the previous books, neither Rob nor Cassie had any real family to speak of (which is why they cottoned onto each other so much and became each others' makeshift family), so it's a nice change of pace to see the Mackeys in all their dysfunction and shared history and love and did I mention dysfunction? The plot feels more believable and less implausible than the previous two books as well: Frank's overly-personal involvement skirts the line of all that's appropriate, but that still makes perfect sense considering his work ethic & his unique position to wrangle information out of this particular case. The stakes and emotional involvement are higher than ever before: there's a particular line where I went from 0 to 100 in terms of SUDDENLY BURSTING INTO TEARS while reading this book. I think this one might be my favourite of the series so far. I'm not even saying much about the plot, because I just dove in blind myself without knowing anything about the core murder or how it winds up on Frank's radar or how it ties to him; simply put, this series is always about the detectives' pasts coming back to haunt them, and them getting too personally involved in the case, which makes for a thrilling and also deeply emotional resolution. I saw the reveal of this one coming, but how it wraps up is quite literally nail-biting & painful & yet satisfying. Just one more quote, for Frank's aching mix of disillusionment & hope re: his father: [Jimmy to Frank:] "I'm asking you for nothing, you stupid little prick. I'm trying to tell you something important, if you'd only shut your gob long enough to listen. Or are you loving your own voice too much for that, are you?"...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 05, 2018
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Mar 09, 2018
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Jul 17, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 1302482920
| B017JEFFMW
| 4.22
| 16,277
| Dec 01, 2015
| Nov 18, 2015
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it was amazing
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"Gorgeous, yet functional." "That's how we roll." Ohman, all my feelings. This one actually made me cry?? It begins with the ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS ADORAB "Gorgeous, yet functional." "That's how we roll." Ohman, all my feelings. This one actually made me cry?? It begins with the ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS ADORABLE teamup between Kamala and her idol, Captain Marvel (the cover shot of a joyous Kamala tentacle-hugging Carol Danvers as they fly through the air is fantastic). I got all teary and verklempt when she and Carol part ways and you see Kamala's heartwarming, eye-opening effect once again on one of the older, more tired heroes. It's also surprisingly dark and dire, thus the Last Days moniker: it looks like the world is honest-to-god going to end, so Kamala is running around town getting all her affairs in order, wrapping things up with her family and best friends, and there are such touching notes especially with her mother and with Bruno (ugh that ending, my heart). The apocalyptic setting also has Kamala, importantly, tying these messages into Muslim faith: 'What she's saying -- weirdly, it makes me think of one of Sheikh Abdullah's lectures. We all face the end alone, he said, and we alone have to account for our time on Earth. The good and the bad. "What will be in the book of your life?" he used to ask. "How will you be remembered?"' There's also some great scenes with Kamala's brother Aamir as he wrestles with some wonky new powers. I love their squabbling but loving sibling dynamic (him standing up for his little sis made me Emotional). The villains attempt to recruit Aamir based on the bitterness they believe he feels as an Othered minority in America, but Aamir turns it on its head with basically a vehement argument against xenophobia and against rape culture: "I'm a what? A religious freak? A [Muslim Students' Association] nerd? A Salafi? Yeah. I'm all those things. And I'm not ashamed of any of them. And if you think that means you can take advantage of my sister -- that I'll blame her for whatever happened between you, while you sashay off into the sunset 'cause you're a guy and nothing is ever your fault -- Well, my brother, you are incorrect." Also, there's a return of the marvelous Adrian Alphona artwork, complete with little tongue-in-cheek background details. The constant zombie jokes! The quarantine wagon! The Say Anything visual reference! Five stars, I love everything. (Disclaimer: This trade actually collects a Spider-Man teamup after the last Ms. Marvel issue too, buuuut I read the issues individually so I only read the Ms. Marvel ones, #16-19.) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 07, 2017
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Jul 07, 2017
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Jul 07, 2017
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Kindle Edition
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| 0698138635
| 9780698138636
| B00HDMMISA
| 4.31
| 1,043,396
| Dec 25, 2014
| Jul 29, 2014
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it was amazing
| Just at that moment, Skye blinked rapidly as a strand of her hair fell in her eyes, and Madeline blanched. The child blinked just like Abigail used to Just at that moment, Skye blinked rapidly as a strand of her hair fell in her eyes, and Madeline blanched. The child blinked just like Abigail used to blink when her hair fell in her eyes. That was a piece of Madeline’s child, Madeline’s past and Madeline’s heart. There should be a law against ex-husbands procreating. As ever with a book that has become Very Popular, I had that instinctive snooty aversion which said "well, I might not like it as much as everyone else"... but no, like it always goes, I loved this!! Big Little Lies is a thriller/mystery unfolding in a small seaside Australian town, centering on the lives of the parents/children at the local kindergarten. The pulpy structure was what really got me hooked, with how it rolls back from the climactic trivia night, and with the between-chapter segments as a detective and a reporter interview all the witnesses: you know that a death will occur, but in addition to not knowing who the killer is, you actually have no idea who died. It's all piled with dramatic foreshadowing, as events steadily march on towards the trivia night and you're getting a better sense of all the people involved, and constantly wondering how this kettle will boil over and who's going to be dead by the end of it (it was pretty easy to guess who it would be, but the circumstances of it still wound up blowing me away by the end). Also: those in-between chapter interview segments are just so funny. Case in point: Thea: I signed [the petition]. That poor little girl. These segments particularly flesh out this squabbling, bickering, catty, gossipy community of small-town parents, in all their various pettiness and judgments and overreactions. And even in the regular chapter prose, too, Moriarty's narrative voice is simultaneously very tongue-in-cheek funny in how it so accurately depicts the ridiculousness of this community, but also sometimes heartbreakingly touching in how she just nails some particularly complicated emotional quirk. She just has such a sympathetic way of writing about the relationships between female friends, or mothers and their children, or wives and their husbands. There's the complications of a blended modern family, like Madeline trying to coexist with her ex-husband with his new child and new wife, even amongst the growing estrangement from her own teenaged daughter. There's remarriage and half-siblings; there's parents grappling with the fact that they don't really know their own children; there's marriages that look perfect on the outside but which are irrevocably broken on the inside. There's single mother Jane, and how she's scrabbling along trying to carve out a good life for her son Ziggy, even as they wind up in the crosshairs of the rich entitled parents at the local school. All of which sounds so banal, but which was endlessly riveting to me: it's all so warm and funny and absorbing that I was completely hooked. Some beats are pretty predictable, like Jane's backstory and how it was hinted at, but other things surprised me. The whodunit is not actually the focus, so much as whathappened, especially with so much dramatic foreshadowing and slow buildup. For all that it's supposedly a mystery, all of the pre-murder setup and buildup is actually the most important thing here. It's more of an intimate character examination, between these three women — Madeline, Celeste, Jane — and the entire community around them. Big lies and little lies, big violence and little violence, the everyday struggles of being a woman. By the end of this, I was so desperately fond of all the characters — even Bonnie, and even the cliqueish snobby bully of a mother, Renata, had some redeeming and likeable qualities. In the end, it's about female friendships, and women supporting women, which got me in my dang heart so strongly that I was in tears by the end. Madeline, especially, is just so fun to spend time with (her marriage with Ed is so warm and loving and endearing), but Celeste was my absolute favourite. The delicate and complicated tenor of her experience with domestic violence was so well-written and well-done. Not cartoonishly over-the-top, and yet still depressingly real, in her back-and-forthing and reluctance to see herself as a victim, because the rest of her too-perfect, rich and beautiful life didn't track with the cliches of abuse. Anyway I loved meeting these characters and learning about their damage and seeing how this delicious drama unfolded. Would definitely watch the HBO show (the casting looks perfect) and read more by Moriarty later. ...more |
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Jun 11, 2021
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Jun 15, 2021
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Apr 06, 2017
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ebook
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| 4.47
| 940,184
| Feb 28, 2017
| Feb 28, 2017
|
it was amazing
| The truth casts a shadow over the kitchen--people like us in situations like this become hashtags, but they rarely get justice. I think we all wait fo The truth casts a shadow over the kitchen--people like us in situations like this become hashtags, but they rarely get justice. I think we all wait for that one time though, that one time when it ends right. I'm so in awe that this is Angie Thomas' debut, because goddamnit, I started the book one afternoon and then had to force myself to not stay up to 2am finishing it (sup Ashley). The plot: Starr Carter, a black sixteen-year-old girl, witnesses her childhood best friend being killed by a police officer, and winds up embroiled in the legal & societal drama that unfolds as their community seeks justice for Khalil's death. At the same time, she attends a primarily-white, upper-class school 45 minutes away, and so finds herself straddling two worlds and struggling to find out where she belongs and how to be, even as her parents struggle with raising their kids, psychologically arming them for the harsh racial realities of the world we live in, and they try to piece their community together and build something better. I'm not kidding when I said I want to shove this book at everyone to read, esp. as it's so tragically relevant these days. It is So Important, and there's so much here: -- Code-switching and performativity and feeling like you need to represent your entire race -- Racism, systemic racism, micro-aggressions, and the way the deck is stacked against minorities and sets them up to fail -- The realities of cutting out a toxic/racist friend if necessary, protecting yourself and standing up for yourself -- Standing up for the marginalised, and minorities sticking together (this was one of my favourite sub-plots, Starr's Chinese friend Maya gave me all the feels) -- Strong, supportive, loving relationships and families, and found family/surrogate family. Starr's parents are a real and active presence in the novel, which is wonderful, because one of my pet peeves is when YA Parents™ become conveniently absent ghosts for the narrative -- The nuances of the differences between social-economic classes, and also cops! Starr's uncle Carlos is a police officer, and I love seeing him come to grips with the tragedy as well. Actually, pretty much every single character has their own interiority and struggle going on, and it's wonderful to watch. -- The cultural differences between black & white communities -- A realistic depiction of a social media generation! (I almost cringed at how much Starr's conversation with her mom about Facebook 100% mirrored my own initial refusal to approve my mom's friend request. She, too, sends me requests for Candy Crush lives every single day.) And realistic teenagers: our protagonist isn't perfect, and often lapses into some really fallible behaviour wrt her own tangled prejudices and how she sometimes exacerbates the divide by pushing her white boyfriend away. But it's important to note that the novel also funny, and cute, even as it's heartbreaking, and I finished the book crying in a Pret a Manger. (Seriously, that place has seen so many of my tears, I need to stop reading over my lunchbreak.) (Jk, I would never stop.) This isn't my lane so I can't speak to how authentic the black community is or isn't in the book, so I will take a cue from my pal Ben and signal-boost some reviews from black female reviewers (since the Goodreads page is... a lotta white or non-black POC reviewers). I'll just quote his recs directly, and a couple of the below reviews are more critical than others: "* Miss Fabularian at Hype Lit offers some thoughtful critique on the way Thomas presents the Black community of Garden Heights in this book. * Brittany N. Williams over at Black Nerd Problems has praise for the prose but concerns over Starr’s characterization and the pacing. * Read in Colour discusses why this book is powerful, particularly as a response or pushback to more white-filtered presentations of movements like Black Lives Matter." One of the reviews did alert me to an aspect of the ending that does misstep a little, as the focus tilts away from the police and towards gang violence -- which maybe risks people turning to the incorrect message "the real problem is black-on-black violence!" -- but I forgive the novel anyway, due to its unabashed, in-your-face treatment of racism and its tackling of police brutality without getting preachy. It's sincere and got heart, in addition to being a well-written, compelling, YA interspersed with enough humour and warmth to make the heavy subject handleable. Favourite quotes below, somewhat spoilery as always: (view spoiler)[As long as I play it cool and keep to myself, I should be fine. The ironic thing is though, at Williamson I don't have to "play it cool"--I'm cool by default because I'm one of the only black kids there. I have to earn coolness in Garden Heights, and that's more difficult than buying retro Jordans on release day. Funny how it works with white kids though. It's dope to be black until it's hard to be black. *** For at least seven hours I don't have to talk about One-Fifteen. I don't have to think about Khalil. I just have to be normal Starr at normal Williamson and have a normal day. That means flipping the switch in my brain so I'm Williamson Starr. Williamson Starr doesn't use slang--if a rapper would say it, she doesn't say it, even if her white friends do. Slang makes them cool. Slang makes her "hood." Williamson Starr holds her tongue when people piss her off so nobody will think she's the "angry black girl." Williamson Starr is approachable. No stank-eyes, side-eyes, none of that. Williamson Starr is nonconfrontational. Basically, Williamson Starr doesn't give anyone a reason to call her ghetto. I can't stand myself for doing it, but I do it anyway. *** "How was your spring break?" Hailey loses her grin and rolls her eyes. "Oh, it was wonderful. Dad and Stepmother Dearest dragged me and Remy to the house in the Bahamas for 'family bonding.'" And bam. That normal feeling? Gone. I suddenly remember how different I am from most of the kids here. Nobody would have to drag me or my brothers to the Bahamas--we'd swim there if we could. For us, a family vacation is staying at a local hotel with a swimming pool for a weekend. "Sounds like my parents," says Britt. "Took us to fucking Harry Potter World for the third year in a row. I'm sick of Butter Beer and corny family photos with wands." Holy shit. Who the fuck complains about going to Harry Potter World? Or Butter Beer? Or wands? I hope none of them ask about my spring break. They went to Taipei, the Bahamas, Harry Potter World. I stayed in the hood and saw a cop kill ym friend. *** I try to forget that he has an entire floor as big as my house and hired help that looks like me. *** Nana was the first to find out about Chris, thanks to he rmaster snooping skills. She told me, "Go 'head, get your swirl on, baby," then proceeded to tell me about all of her swirling adventures, which I didn't need to know. *** I feel like shit right now. I can't believe I let Hailey say that. Or has she always joked like that? Did I always laugh because I thought I had to? That's the problem. We let people say stuff, and they say it so much that it becomes okay to them and normal for us. What's the point of having a voice if you're gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn't be? *** "We had an argument yesterday," I say. "Really though, things have been weird for a while. She stopped texting me and unfollowed my Tumblr." Mom reaches her fork onto my plate and breaks off a piece of pancake. "What is Tumblr anyway? Is it like Facebook?" "No, and you're forbidden to get one. No parents allowed. You guys already took over Facebook." "You haven't responded to my friend request yet." "I know." "I need Candy Crush lives." "That's why I'll never respond." *** A millionaire, who wishes to remain anonymous, offered to pay my college tuition. John said the offer was made right after the interview aired. I think it's Oprah, but that's just me because I've always imagined she's my fairy godmother and one day she'll come to my house saying, "You get a car!" *** "This is exactly what They expect you to do," Momma says. "Two kids from Garden Heights, acting like you ain't got any sense!" They with a capital T. There's Them and then there's Us. Sometimes They look like Us and don't realize They are Us. *** "So what's our punishment?" Seven asks. "Go do your homework," Momma says. "That's it?" I say. "You'll also have to help your dad at the store while you're suspended." She drapes her arms over Daddy from behind. "Sound okay, baby?" He kisses her arm. "Sounds good to me." If you can't translate Parentish, this is what they really said: Momma: I don't condone what you did, and I'm not saying it's okay, but I probably would've done it too. What about you, baby? Daddy: Hell yeah, I would've. I love them for that. *** People say misery loves company, but I think it's like that witih anger too. I'm not the only one pissed--everyone around me is. They didn't have to be sitting in the passenger's seat when it happened. My anger is theirs, and theirs is mine. (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 24, 2017
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May 25, 2017
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Mar 22, 2017
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Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||||||
| 0399178465
| 9780399178467
| B01EE0CQYO
| 4.18
| 9,238
| Dec 16, 2016
| Dec 16, 2016
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it was amazing
| “Relax, Captain,” Chirrut answered. “We’ve been in worse cages than this one.” “Relax, Captain,” Chirrut answered. “We’ve been in worse cages than this one.” I was hard-pressed to choose a flagship quote for my review, because I highlighted literally 97 of them(!), but I went for this one because it illustrates some of the Rogue One team dynamic and a subtle detail that I missed while watching. First off, don't read this novelisation until you've seen the film! But listen to me: I loved the movie, and this actually improves upon its source material. It clarifies some character motivations & intentions, fleshes them out a bit more, makes you care about them even more. Freed infuses each of the characters with more personality: Jyn's driving need to find something to believe in, her complicated abandonment issues about both her fathers; Saw Gerrera's own noble, half-mad convictions; Cassian's guilt complexes; Baze's bitter fury; Chirrut's wry humour; even Bodhi's gambling problems. Alan Dean Foster's The Force Awakens' novelisation was garbage, but Freed's prose is lovely; Cassian's opening scene is almost noir-like in his interrogation of an informant on a dark and seedy station. Freed also has a great grasp on character voice, which seeps into the narration. You can hear in Galen Erso's thoughts that the man is robotic and analytical; K-2SO is clipped and cynical as he calculates his way to conclusions; Orson Krennic has a slimy, unctuous arrogance to his narration. There are some POV chapters from aliens, too, which remind you that even their thought processes differ from humans on a species level. The sheer desperation and diversity of the Rebel Alliance is on full display, all of their leaders struggling with finding the right approach to an unstoppable war machine. I loved seeing more from characters like Mon Mothma and General Draven. And in seeing the narrative focus on the Empire's race to develop the Death Star, as well, I was reminded of WWII's nuclear arms-race, like a chilling commentary on our own use of inconceivable might and atrocity. In the words of Galen Erso himself: “My colleagues, many of them, have fooled themselves into thinking they are creating something so terrible and powerful it will never be used. But they’re wrong. No weapon has ever been left on the shelf.” When the Death Star is unleashed for the first time... it has so much more emotional effect than it did in the film. In the movie, it's a fantastic visual, a thrilling chase scene to escape. Whereas in the novelisation, I found myself getting teary on the subway for throwaway bystanders; it drove in the impact so that you feel it, you see the lives snuffed out. It's a series of horrors, but the one that actually got me worst was the Imperial stormtroopers left behind by their own callous empire, because fuuuuck: JN-093 finally thought to look at the shadow in the sky. She stared at the structure, indefinably large and eclipsing the sun. She knew a weapon when she saw one, no matter how incomprehensible. MY FEELINGS And like the Pacific Rim novelisation, chapters here are abridged with epistolary interludes that do a tremendous job of worldbuilding the Alliance and Empire: communiques back and forth, reports on planets and people, showing the inner workings of these organisations. Possibly my very favourite section of the entire book were the slew of memos back and forth between Galen, Krennic, and an exasperated Death Star QA technician. You actually get to see how Galen masterfully exploits reverse psychology, tight project deadlines and therefore cutting corners, and pressure from Imperial higher-ups to lay his trap & sabotage the project, all while sounding like he's arguing for the exact opposite, and all with Orson Krennic's full approval. It's fantastic. The ending is a series of successive punches to the heart, and I finished the book crying in bed. I'm happily going to read everything else Freed has written now tbh (I'm excited for Battlefront - Twilight Company especially, because WAR FEELS). The best novelisations contribute to their films rather than just being a shallow money-grab tie-in, and I'm happy to say that this is a stellar example of the former. I liked the PacRim novelisation well enough, and thought it handled some scenes better than the film while other scenes played better on-screen -- but I'd say that this one universally enriches Rogue One. And I'll say it again: I already really liked Rogue One. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Dec 18, 2016
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Dec 22, 2016
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Dec 18, 2016
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ebook
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| 0061449202
| 9780061449208
| 0061449202
| 4.35
| 40,945
| Apr 02, 2013
| Apr 08, 2014
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it was amazing
|
Oh man oh man oh man. This is gonna be long. Non-spoilery review: I meant to hold off on this book a little -- to let Katelynn catch up a bit in her rea Oh man oh man oh man. This is gonna be long. Non-spoilery review: I meant to hold off on this book a little -- to let Katelynn catch up a bit in her reading, to catch a breather myself, to let the series sink in a little because I went through Fear in such a frenzy that I barely remember what exactly happened in it. But instead, I found myself distracted while reading other books (Terry Pratchett, y'all! Terry Pratchett!!) because I just kept thinking about the poor Perdido kids and their predicament, the outside world, the FAYZ, and desperately needing to know how it all resolves. And, I am thankful to say, Michael Grant completely sticks the landing. The emotional impact has never been higher than now; it's been some 3000 pages of getting really, dreadfully attached to these characters, and having seen them grow and triumph (or fall apart) through adversity. I wasn't quite so attached to them in the first book because they were a little thinly drawn and Grant was doing so much legwork to set up his world and his thriller, but by now, they've sunk in and established themselves. If you didn't find any character out of this huge ensemble cast to connect with & identify with, then I'm not sure what I can do for you. And this book is so dark. So, so so dark. Children have suffered before and it's been gruesome before, but the violence in this one is seriously off the charts, gut-churning, total nightmare fuel and body horror. The plot progression in this one provided me with absolutely everything I wanted, with the side-effect of emotionally destroying me (by the end, I was literally -- no hyperbole -- literally crying in bed). This series delved into and course-corrected a few of the themes and tropes that Applegrant weren't able to fully explore in their Remnants series, specifically (view spoiler)[Tate/Dekka's lesbianism, Tamara/Diana's baby, and the all-powerful Billy/Little Pete (hide spoiler)]. Gone is a bit on the long side, with 6 books of ~400-500 pages each, but that's what makes them so great for me: in a world of slim, skimpy YA novels and trilogies, this series is meaty and weighty and fillled chock-a-block with action. It's like being strapped into an unstoppable ride of survival, sheer survival in an absolutely horrific situation. This last book especially had me going "oh no no no NO NO NO NO" constantly. I'm being vague about what the main conflict even is in this last book because it's a spoiler in itself, but. If you read YA, just read this series about kids being trapped in a bubble, developing superpowers, and struggling to build some sort of dystopian apocalyptic society. Grant doesn't sink into any of the stereotypes that dog a lot of dystopian YA today, and features a large diverse cast, both in terms of race and sexuality. There's lots of competent female characters, and also characters who are allowed to be weak, to stumble, and to redeem themselves. This is firmly one of my favourite YA series of all time now. ====== Now, for the SPOILERIFIC DETAILED DISCUSSION OF THE CHARACTERS AND SHIT THAT HAPPENS IN THIS BOOK, SERIOUSLY, SPOILERS (view spoiler)[• Brianna. Fuck. Her death was the first time that I teared up, and felt like I'd been punched in the gut, because I hadn't been expecting it. This series has actually played so carefully with deaths -- it was one of my only ongoing quibbles, that the Main Players in previous books always ended up being safe no matter what, and only side characters kept getting exterminated -- but now that it's the final book, all bets are off and no one is safe. → But also: I've had this nagging feeling throughout the series, and it finally culminated here... I actually suspect that Brianna may be a sociopath? A heroic one, one who helps out the Good Guys, and I love her, but she's self-centered and egotistical and only focused on her own thrills. Using her sorta-boyfriend Jack because she's bored, not because she cares for him, and she doesn't even give a damn when he may be dead. She is completely amoral in terms of horrific violence that makes others vomit, and bragging about murder. At first it starts off as a character strength -- she's tough and brave and unflappable! -- but by this last book, I was horrified by her lack of emotions and non-reaction to things. Maybe it's also the desensitising effect of their experiences in the FAYZ, but idk I feel like there also might've been something wrong with Brianna. STILL THO, I LOVED HER :( • Orc. Fuck!! His path has been such a long and winding road, from brute villain in the first book, to sympathetic abused child and "My name’s Charles Merriman. People should call me by my real name sometimes." to so desperate to redeem himself... lakjgkfjg. • A problem with Lana at the start was that she operated completely solo, resistant to developing attachments to anyone, which also made it harder for me to connect with her because she was so isolated. But by these last couple books, her relationship with Sanjit really opens her up. • It's honestly just astounding how my opinions on characters shifted over the course of this series. People I hated at the start, like Quinn and Orc and Howard, became some of my most well-loved. Astrid herself points this out, re: how far they've all come and how conflicted she feels about a lot of the other Perdido kids. I'd definitely warmed up to her by the end too, although I'm... still not especially into Sam/Astrid? (Apparently I am Sam/Edilio trash, I learned this over the course of the series!) Sam and Astrid are a great portrait of a relationship in that they have real problems and real fights, but they just settled together so quickly and automatically -- ah, yes, of course the main character will get together with his female crush, and they will be our mom & pop of the FAYZ -- that I never quite cared about their romantic relationship, only about how they managed the FAYZ together and managed conflicts together. • Diana's accelerated pregnancy and Gaia...! Gaia is this overpowered nightmare creature, which raises the stakes to a near-impossible level. But what I love about this is that Grant doesn't even paint her in a single shade. Gaia is... weirdly... cute? Ineffable powerful demons and extradimensional monsters learning How To Human is one of my favourite things, and it added a level of vulnerability & childlike humanity to the gaiaphage, as it grapples with this new world, new threats, new body. I liked that it had biological weaknesses, that it got more than it bargained for when it made itself corporeal: its irritation with the human body, its inability to figure out which injuries were more lifethreatening than others. It was so perfectly-written as a monster inhabiting a flesh sack, and I felt like it was a much better version of Tamara's baby from Remnants. • The only characters who were out-and-out 100% evil and psychotic were Penny and Drake, which I kinda accepted because they're also batshit insane. I'm undecided whether I wanted Drake to be killed off earlier in the series (because he really lasted a very very long time); I think I could have done with less of him and an earlier 'win', but I'm also fine with how it went. Also, it's kinda interesting how Light pulls back some of the layers around Drake: meeting his grandfather, hearing about his abusive stepfather, and the man's treatment of Drake's mother... the awareness that he might have been different if his mother hadn't remarried and he hadn't had this toxic influence in his life. • I think this message is also hammered in by the end, finding out that both Sam and Caine had a connection to the gaiaphage since birth, and that it was just the lack of love in Caine's live that made him like he was. Waugh!! It really emphasises the importance of how children are raised and treated, in order for them to turn out as okay people. • And okay, on that note, let's talk about Caine. Caine Soren. Caine fucking Soren. The ending: There was a point where I thought it was going to be Astrid offering herself up to Pete to atone for her past actions, and Sam honest-to-god killing himself in order to rid Gaia of his light abilities. "How fucking painful would it be if Grant just killed his main two characters in the last book?" But then, the very moment that both characters resolved themselves to that fate is when I stopped and basically went oh fuck, fuck, NO because then I knew: it was going to be Caine. I knew that because our heroes had lined themselves up for this heroic self-sacrifice~, that meant the anti-villain was going to swoop in and steal that moment from them. And it was going to wreck me. So. Caine! The whole time through this series, I've been clamouring about how I wanted him to get a redemption arc, and Light finally served it up to me and how. This is the point where I was crying in bed! His final act of self-sacrifice. How he didn't let Diana come with him. The letters he left behind for her and for the world, to take on the guilt of everything within the FAYZ and to clear the slates for everyone else. Because he was thinking ahead to the future, figuring out how to solve the legal & criminal problems that were going to fall on the kids. Excusing himself from the aftermath so that he wouldn't have to spend years in a cell. Fuck fuck fuuuuckkk. Watching his slow devleopment over the course of the series, as he develops Feelings and realises he has something he wants to protect, was wonderful. Diana, despite her snark~* and labelling herself as a bad girl at the start, actually is a caretaker: she looked after Caine when he was ranting and raving from the gaiaphage, and she looked after Penny when she was ruined. Caine took longer to unearth his own good sides, and was resistant to admitting it even at the end, and I love him for it. Plus, the brothers relationship was exactly what I wanted to see. Teaming up, side-by-side, Sam trying to rattle Caine's cage and failing miserably, Caine managing to psych out Sam much more effectively in return. I loved any situation in the series that pitted these two together rather than against each other. I am seriously going to miss Caine: his dry snark and delusions of grandeur, his cunning pragmatism and charisma, his sheer all-consuming love for Diana, his heroism at the last. • And as with Animorphs, Grant thankfully takes the time to address post-FAYZ life -- he doesn't just cut out when the action is over. He ties off all the loose ends, quickly addresses how everyone dealt and moved on. Sam, Astrid, and Diana living in an apartment together just warms my heart so much. ;_____; (hide spoiler)] Long story short, Grant nailed it, and Light is a perfect conclusion to a wild ride. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Aug 24, 2016
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Aug 25, 2016
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Aug 24, 2016
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Paperback
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| B01CYNTD62
| 4.42
| 13,769
| May 02, 2017
| May 04, 2017
|
it was amazing
| My definition of an adult is someone who lives their life aware they are sharing the world with others. My definition of an adult is someone who knows My definition of an adult is someone who lives their life aware they are sharing the world with others. My definition of an adult is someone who knows the world was here before they showed up and that it’ll be here well after they walk away from it. My definition of an adult, in other words, is someone who lives their life with a little fucking perspective. Oh man, for once I'm not actually sure what to say, so this is probably going to be a rambly disorganised horrorfest of thoughts. This trilogy is one of my favourite fantasy series of all time: it's so rich, imaginative, thrilling, and feelsy, with all of its conflict still anchored in character development and growth. Even when there are very big ideas at play -- literally personified deified concepts at war! -- then it's still tied into intimate, relatable concepts: trauma, familial love, parenthood. As the last book, City of Miracles is a lovely, respectful goodbye to all of the plotlines and characters kicked into motion in the first two, and I finished this crying in bed. This third book explores "wrath" (as City of Stairs explored "doubt", and City of Blades explored "regret"), and Sigrud is a fitting protagonist to bear that burden. The parent feelings are still strong here, as he picks up the mantle of protecting Shara's adoptive daughter, Tatyana. Badass And Child Duo is one of my very favourite tropes (Lone Wolf and Cub, Logan, The Last of Us, The Witcher...), and this jots right into that, with the grizzled old warrior protecting this young bookish teen, safeguarding all his hopes for the next generation, all his memories of his closest and only friend Shara. And goddamn is it feelsy. It's also fantastic that apart from Sigrud and the villain, pretty much every single character in this book is female. It is funny getting into Sigrud's head at long last, though, because he's so impassive and inscrutable... and he's having to sit and take a hard look at himself for the first time. From RJB himself: If The Divine Cities is about anything, it is about trauma, and change. These are stories of pain, and grief, and grudges – some personal, others cultural, or Divine. They are stories of bruised idealists struggling to figure out what to do with all their pain and grief. Each character is presented with the same question, in a way – “Can you move past this? Can we move past this?” – and each one answers it in their own manner. O, my heart. It feels slightly more noirish/special agenty than the previous books too: one lone hardbitten investigator pounding the pavement, struggling to put together a situation above his paygrade. There's some Bond in here too, giving me some Skyfallish vibes -- an operative at the end of his tether and exploring the deep relationship between him and Shara, essentially his M. One of the most fascinating things, too, is spending 3 books in this world and seeing the cities grow and change, technology slowly encroaching upon society. Seeing this happen is especially emotionally resonant considering the events of the previous book, and some of the more modern action set pieces are amazing (the tram y'all!!). The characters have all aged past their prime, and it gives the series a broad, sweeping, twenty-year scope, so that by the end you're genuinely sorrowful to bid them farewell and to wrap all this up. The antagonist here is frightening, but also sympathetic. I won't say much more, for spoilers! The one thing is that I personally preferred City of Blades because a) Mulaghesh is incredible and the best, b) war as theme is closer to my heart, and c) I cried harder in CoB, so ultimately this is 4.5 stars just barely rounded down (though I might bump it up again after I've had some time to reflect) (EDIT: a year later, I've bumped up the rating, because I cannot remember a single flaw tbh). But rest assured, it's so damn good. This whole series is fantastic. Don't skip any of 'em, these aren't standalones -- just read all three already, if you like riveting action/thrillers set in well-thought-out secondary worlds, with dead and dying gods, mysteries, strong female characters, and SO MANY FEELINGS. As a parting signoff, I'll share Chanh Quach's perfect illustrations again: [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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May 03, 2017
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May 06, 2017
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Jan 27, 2016
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Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||||
| 0939165651
| 9780939165650
| B00B6U0BNO
| 4.07
| 652
| Mar 10, 2005
| Apr 16, 2005
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it was amazing
| We had lost our right to be in the privacy of our own home, the right to come and go as we pleased, the right to voice our opinions openly without fea We had lost our right to be in the privacy of our own home, the right to come and go as we pleased, the right to voice our opinions openly without fear of retaliation, the right to be involved in creative activities of our choosing. I was loyal to the country that guaranteed these rights—and that country no longer existed for me. The sudden loss of all these rights forced me to realize that this whole mass movement against the Japanese in America was the culmination of more than a half-century of anti-Asian prejudice. And no one, not even the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court, would defend us. The clear message to me was that we did not deserve to be in the world because we were different. And because we were different, we must also be bad. Ouch. Just, ouch. Nonfiction about World War II, and especially the internment of Japanese-Americans, is one of my particular interests in an attempt to understand a deeply-gutting issue that could have touched my family, were circumstances a little different. I'm still amazed by how little I've heard about internment over the course of my life; Mary Matsuda Gruenewald talks about that a bit, as the silent generation, an ugly chapter of American history that white Americans at the time perhaps didn't fully understand (especially thanks to the sensationalist war-time media propaganda machine), and it seems people afterwards don't like to think about. But with things like George Takei's recent Broadway musical Allegiance (which made me curl in on myself in my seat with convulsive sobs), I'm hoping that awareness will spread. It's still so important today, to be self-aware about this country's history of racism and xenophobia -- it's relevant considering, for example, growing Islamophobia post-9/11. It's important to hear stories from the past in an attempt to prevent it recurring in the future. And the author states that plainly, that it's one of her motivations in finally opening up about a past that she'd otherwise been incredibly reticent about, to the extent of her own family not knowing about it. Style-wise, Mary Matsuda Gruenewald's writing is a little stilted. There's lots and lots of precise, slightly-awkward dialogue that I'm not sure how she could have remembered (I can hardly remember the phrasing of conversations I had last night, let alone 60 years ago). But her use of so much dialogue and straightforward description makes the book very readable, almost like a young adult novel about this teenager's experiences. And the style isn't really the important thing here, which is why I'm still giving it 5 stars. It's content, and that content is important. In close personal focus, Gruenewald paints the details of her and her family's experience: the overwhelming emotions and terror and uncertainty; the complicated position they were placed in, of being loyal to a country that so wholly ostracised them without due cause; a teenager having her eyes opened to prejudice for the first time, and wrestling with that shame over her self-identity, a shame validated by our own government; the sacrifices the 442nd made, dying by the score to win back their country's trust for a crime they didn't commit; navigating the line between not being fully Japanese, but not allowed to be American either. And it's so horrifying to think that the Matsudas actually had one of the relatively better experiences (which I feel weird stating about someone else's life, but the author herself describes that she was shocked to realise how much less prejudice/hardship she'd experienced compared to families from California, and that the Pacific Northwest had kept her in a bit of a protective bubble). The Matsudas weren't torn apart by the loyalty questionnaire, either, which is certainly a thing that happened. Several parts of this memoir made me quietly cry while reading (and since my main places for reading are the subway, restaurants over lunch, and airplanes, that was awkward). It's a punch to the heart, and I'm so glad that Gruenewald decided to tell her story. One of likely many memoirs I'll read on the subject, to keep gathering different perspectives and personal stories from this time. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Dec 29, 2015
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Jan 05, 2016
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Dec 29, 2015
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Kindle Edition
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| 0439115280
| 9780439115285
| 0439115280
| 4.05
| 2,760
| Jun 01, 2001
| May 2001
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it was amazing
|
The end is the beginning is the end. When I mention Animorphs to people who never read it, or read part of the series but never finished, one of the f
The end is the beginning is the end. When I mention Animorphs to people who never read it, or read part of the series but never finished, one of the first things they ask is "Does it actually have a proper ending?". And my immediate answer is Yes, yes, and how. It does end, as the Ellimist promised them sadly in Megamorphs #4. But are you going to be happy with it? Ah, there's the rub. KAA received a lot of flak for this ending back in the day; I think largely because her readership were all loyal youths, and we were shocked and horrified and jarred and depressed by it. We've all grown up on neat, happy endings, so this one is unusual, and I hadn't seen anything like it before or since. But revisiting this as an adult, I think it's perfect. The plot careens onwards to its inevitable conclusion, the loose ends are tied up, and most importantly, the painful aftermath is examined. I love The Hunger Games, but I'm going to make the case that as a series, this is a much more sophisticated, mature, painful, and realistic exploration of war. Of course, with 62 books to stretch her legs, Applegate had a much bigger canvas to play around with and develop her characters & themes. I'm going to split this review into two parts -- first, looking at this book individually, and then trying to do a post-mortem of the series as a whole. And you know what, let's just put this all under a spoiler cut for obvious reasons... BOOK-SPECIFIC: (view spoiler)[After the out-of-control train that was #53 The Answer, the impact finally hits. The crash comes in the first chapter, and god, but it's painful. I always remembered that Rachel died, but my memories had blanketed over the details. I thought it happened in a group battle. I had, in fact, forgotten that it happened alone, and at Jake's explicit orders. I had forgotten that she kills Tom. This line: <Jake, stop her!> the Yeerk screamed with Tom's mouth. is absolutely horrifying, because of the way it comes with Tom's voice, and how it lays the responsibility/plea on Jake's doorstep at the very last -- I can imagine that sentence, his brother's dying words, will haunt Jake until the very end of his days. It's slamming the nail shut on his coffin and making him feel personally responsible for this. Also, the way Rachel asks Tobias to help -- not to save her, but to help her kill Tom. It's horrible, and so appropriate. Because she's pragmatic, our girl is, and of course she's going to keep her eye on the prize even as she's dying. As she dies. And then the politicking. Cassie doesn't comfort Jake after they helplessly watch Rachel's gruesome death (at his order, at his command), but rather pushes him back into the saddle yet again (also appropriate) in order to do what they have to do. The negotiations begin and the Animorphs, with the help of a now-free Alloran, are able to finagle a victory out of the Andalites, to honour their promises to the Yeerks and Taxxons. Jake has done horrendous things in order to achieve his bottom-line victory: betrayed their allies the Chee, cut deals with their enemies the Yeerks & Taxxons, ordered the auxiliary Animorphs to their deaths, and committed atrocities on both a macro-level (seventeen thousand dead Yeerks) and a micro-level (I had ordered my cousin to execute my brother. How would I ever explain that?). And after three years and so many losses, the war finally ends -- not with a bang, but a whimper. And then most of the book is the post-war phase, picking up the pieces afterwards. Most YA series these days (looking at you, Harry Potter and The Hunger Games) choose to address this as a years-and-years-later epilogue. You fast-forward several decades and see your characters healed, having moved on and built a new life. But I think that's why readers have been so dissatisfied with epilogues like that: they feel cheap. Animorphs, on the other hand, plants you right in the heart of it, showing how fucking hard it is to pick up the pieces afterwards. How you search for meaning and fulfilment. How you deal with rebuilding. What do you do when you've fought so long and so hard, and your entire life has centered around this thing, and then you finally get what you wanted? What comes next? Jake's arc and development is fabulous here. His clinical depression and PTSD and adjustment to post-war life (it reminds me brilliantly of The Hurt Locker), and their attempts to jar him out of it. Applegate's commentary on post-war rehabilitation and trauma is fantastic, really: the way some soldiers never really come home from it. Jake's separation of life into before the war, during the war, and after the war, and how the middle is so overwhelming and all-consuming that the rest pales in comparison. I'm listening to an 8tracks playlist for Animorphs right now, and it's playing Stars' song "In Our Bedroom After the War", which is so fitting: Lift your head and look out the window Fantastic. And every single one of the Animorphs apart from Cassie have a rumination about how they miss it a little; it's subtle, but you catch glimpses of them restless and dissatisfied, missing something from their old lives. Then: the Intrepid, and Ax being taken by the Blade ship. Jake gathering them all back up for one last suicide mission, the cage snapping shut around them. Again, it's inevitable, and everyone is willing to sign up with him one last time. "I could fly away. If I didn’t, I was trapped. I would be trapped with Jake. Again." -- and yet there's no doubt of what they'll choose. All for one, and one for all. As a kid, I remember being especially distressed at the cliffhanger ending, just because I wanted to know what happens next. I didn't want any mystery. I wanted all the answers, and for everything to be tied off in a neat bow. But now, reflecting on it, I think it's an appropriate ending. It leaves you with the impression of them trapped in a cycle of fighting, and it opens up the slate for readers to imagine what comes next. Here are a few quotes from a fan chat with KAA way back in the day, probably early 2000s: DishDiva: K.A., we have a lot of questions about Rachel. So now, I appreciate the ending. Her attitude reminds me of Michael Chabon's essay On Fan Fictions, and I also appreciate KAA and Michael Grant's approach/mentality to the reader/author relationship: you do you, interpretation is in the hands of the reader, go ahead and contribute and imagine. And the more I reread them, the more I love the last lines of this book. The similarities between Rachel and Jake, so much more pronounced at the end of days, once he lost his tether. But now the Animorphs are back doing what they're so very good at, and they go out together, as a team, their bonds rebuilt. Just like the good bad old days. DISCUSSING THE ENDING: As Stephanie and I have blathered at each other and in our reviews, I think this is, technically, a happy ending (even as you feel gutted and hollowed-out and destroyed by it). The realistic alternative was likely a long, drawn-out future where Cassie finds fulfilment, but Marco finds himself bored and restless and dissatisfied; Ax keeps hunting the Blade ship as the galaxy settles into peace, still missing something himself; Tobias dies alone as a redtailed hawk; Jake wastes away in a clinical depression; and all of them grow apart, and the time between calls grows longer and longer. Maybe Jake would have recovered eventually, and found some fulfilment and healing in teaching. But I don't think so. The description of his daily routine while teaching is empty, and actually sort of miserable. At the end, he finally drops the self-delusion and acknowledges that war is his lifeline, and Cassie and Marco know it too. And to quote the Hamilton musical: [WASHINGTON] Rachel had it easy, in a sense. She got to go out like a martyr and die doing what she was good at, what she was made for (even in the AU of Megamorphs #4 where they never join the fight, Cassie realises that there's something restless in Rachel, some drive that isn't being fulfilled). And she doesn't have to face the hard question of post-war life. Jake didn't know what to do with his life anymore when he wasn't fighting, and the only way he could capture that sense of purpose was, yes, to re-enter another war. And this way, with the trope of 'getting the gang back together' and Jake visiting the Animorphs one-by-one and recruiting them to rescue Ax, to go back to what they're so terribly, terribly good at, and to go out in a blaze of glory... It's triumphant, in a way. They likely all die, and Cassie is left alone (but with less of the frustration behind Susan & the Chronicles of Narnia). But how else were they going to go out? We beat an empire, my friend, the six of us. (hide spoiler)] --- SERIES-SPECIFIC / AS A WHOLE: (view spoiler)[K.A. Applegate's response to criticism of the ending. I think you can hear her bitterness in this letter, and I agree with her entirely. It wouldn't have worked as a no-strings-attached happy ending. It would have deeply undermined her point, the one that she's been laying seeds for ever since the beginning, the whole way through: from Alloran and Loren discussing the Vietnam war in The Andalite Chronicles; to their brushes with moral decisions in letting Visser Three's serial murderer twin brother go; to Rachel's continuing series-long devolution; to the war crimes of the Hork-Bajir war, and the human-Yeerk war. I think I can generally see three different types of endings, for long series: 1. The triumphant epic, with banners and streamers and joy and celebration. Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings have these. Your heroes deserve it, and I'm happy for them when this does happen. And different strokes for different folks, but I love this. It ended the only way it could end, in keeping with its themes and messages all along. We've spent 62 books growing attached to these characters, and seeing them fray and come apart at the seams and be consumed by this war until it's practically the only thing they know how to do. (hide spoiler)] I wholeheartedly, absolutely recommend this series to both old fans wanting to revisit the books, and to new fans even if they've never read Animorphs before. If you can get past the relatively sparse prose, it grows from middle-grade to young adult, and gets more and more sophisticated and complex and heartwrenching as time goes on. The prose isn't flowery, but the content is intense. It's an examination of the horrors and toll of war, child soldiers, PTSD, trauma, ethics & morality, the slippery slope and the hard line, and the lengths you have to go to to win. It's about necessary evils, and yet also the importance of sheer dumb hope and altruism and cooperation, about friendship and family as anchoring tethers (and tethers for sanity, even). It's about not always being able to tell the good guys from the bad. It's about stepping up to do the hard thing, and the right thing, and never giving up. It's about being brave, and strong, and good, even when faced with so much awfulness. It's about enduring, outlasting, and outwaiting the awful. They're six idiot teenagers with a death wish, and they're funny and brave and charitable and doing their best in a terrible situation, and you can't help but love them, all of them. Quotes, as always: (view spoiler)[My name is Rachel....more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 27, 2015
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Nov 27, 2015
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Dec 06, 2015
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Paperback
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my rating |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 4.34
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it was amazing
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Nov 19, 2022
Mar 07, 2022
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Sep 25, 2022
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| 4.17
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it was amazing
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Dec 23, 2022
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Jun 21, 2022
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| 3.91
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really liked it
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Feb 25, 2021
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Feb 16, 2021
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|||||
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| 4.07
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it was amazing
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Dec 30, 2019
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Dec 06, 2019
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|||||
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| 4.21
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it was amazing
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Aug 15, 2021
Jun 21, 2020
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Aug 24, 2019
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|||||
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| 4.16
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really liked it
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May 14, 2021
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Jun 18, 2019
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|||||
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| 4.56
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it was amazing
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Feb 17, 2019
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Feb 26, 2018
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|||||
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| 4.08
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really liked it
|
Dec 19, 2017
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Oct 10, 2017
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|||||
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| 3.93
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it was amazing
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Feb 12, 2018
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Sep 12, 2017
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|||||
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| 4.48
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really liked it
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Oct 15, 2017
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Aug 25, 2017
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|||||
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| 4.59
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it was amazing
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Apr 27, 2021
Sep 13, 2017
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Jul 26, 2017
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|||||
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| 4.00
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it was amazing
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Mar 09, 2018
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Jul 17, 2017
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|||||
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| 4.22
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it was amazing
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Jul 07, 2017
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Jul 07, 2017
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|||||
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| 4.31
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it was amazing
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Jun 15, 2021
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Apr 06, 2017
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|||||
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| 4.47
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it was amazing
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May 25, 2017
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Mar 22, 2017
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|||||
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| 4.18
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it was amazing
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Dec 22, 2016
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Dec 18, 2016
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|||||
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| 4.35
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it was amazing
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Aug 25, 2016
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Aug 24, 2016
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|||||
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| 4.42
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it was amazing
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May 06, 2017
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Jan 27, 2016
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|||||
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| 4.07
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it was amazing
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Jan 05, 2016
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Dec 29, 2015
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|||||
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| 4.05
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it was amazing
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Nov 27, 2015
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Dec 06, 2015
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