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| 1250244072
| 9781250244079
| 1250244072
| 4.20
| 9,961
| Aug 06, 2024
| Aug 06, 2024
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 23, 2024
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Sep 26, 2024
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Jun 07, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 076531097X
| 9780765310972
| 076531097X
| 3.91
| 591
| Oct 01, 2005
| Oct 01, 2005
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liked it
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On the one hand, I want to be nice to this book. The writing is good, the premise unique, the characters sympathetic but still believable, and the aut
On the one hand, I want to be nice to this book. The writing is good, the premise unique, the characters sympathetic but still believable, and the author’s heart clearly in the right place: it’s a book about a family of “illegal aliens” (from another dimension!) making lives for themselves in the modern United States, and its perspective on American culture is entertaining and thought-provoking, while its thoughts on how we fail immigrants and the poor are timely. On the other hand, I wound up disappointed. The plot drags, with conversations running long to illustrate the book’s themes, there’s a major plot reveal worthy only of a soap opera, the home culture is far too romanticized for its not-fully-acknowledged misogyny, and numerous elements just seem dated or unlikely. I can’t argue with the book’s obscurity. The story follows an extended family exiled from their idyllic homeland after one of their young men is accused of murdering a holy woman. The family lands in a refugee camp in the Nevada desert (it’s meant to be a near-future setting, as seen from its publication date in 2005, but the existence of the camp is the only futuristic element). Ultimately they are able to get out, but struggle with cultural differences, secrets, and the difficulty of rebuilding under assumed identities in a foreign land. The story is told from three perspectives, one in first person and two in third: the grandfather, the ghost of the deceased son, and the high-achieving granddaughter. Perhaps this book filled a needed gap in 2005, especially as it’s just fantastical enough to tempt genre fans who turn up their noses at realistic fiction. But there’s been such an explosion of work by and about immigrants in the intervening decades that unless you are an insular fan yourself (and even then, fantasy writing is very diverse these days), this isn’t a top-shelf pick on the topic. (For the interested, here’s three nonfiction books that resonate with the themes of this one, plus three memoirs, and three novels. That last also being partly speculative.) Part of the problem is the idealization of the home culture. It’s highly patriarchal, which the book only barely acknowledges: it draws attention to the religion having historically distributed all its burdens and benefits to men, but women now making inroads. Okay. But the book never deals with the fact that this culture also expects women to be housewives in their husbands’ family compound; that it has a strict purity culture around women’s sexual behavior while allowing male sexual license; that its paramount importance on the family is accompanied by a “wives, cleave to thy husbands” attitude where a married woman now belongs to her husband’s family rather than her own. The thing that gets me about this is that the traditional values that a modern reader might question all magically disappear the instant the family arrives in the U.S.—no one ever questions the wives working, the granddaughters getting educated for a career, the granddaughters dating or whether marriage means they’ll be lost to the family—while all the traditional values we might admire (sticking together, giving to the homeless, respecting the earth and all living things) remain firmly in place. I’m sorry, I call bullshit. Speaking of nonsense plot points, the big reveal about Darroti’s crime is so absolutely absurd that a moment meant to inspire tragedy and pathos just had me rolling my eyes and going “oh come on!”: (view spoiler)[the holy woman was his secret girlfriend and, in a one-two punch of tired tropes, saw him with a female friend and assumed it was sexual, then ignored his “I can explain!” And then, like 30 seconds into their argument, she cuts her own throat and dies. That is both completely unhinged behavior that was not at all foreshadowed, and probably pretty hard to accomplish on a practical level. There’s a reason most suicide attempts fail and that this is not a common method. And then Darroti lets his nine closest family members go into permanent exile rather than make any attempt to clear his name. (hide spoiler)] Sadly, there’s more. The family’s never developing a real cover story about where they’re from and defaulting to “you won’t have heard of it” broke my suspension of disbelief. (In the internet age? You don’t need a puppy-dog crush like that one pushy boyfriend to be curious enough to Google.) Speaking of the pushy boyfriend, (view spoiler)[Darroti’s ghost pushing marriage on Zamatryna because he thought it would right his own wrongs was creepy, and after the book had acknowledged how much pressure Zamatryna was under, the fact that she went through with this marriage she didn’t really want in order to secure her family’s immigration status and to please other people was just sad. (hide spoiler)] The treatment of alcoholism is dated: to be fair, in 2005 I probably also believed that the primary thing keeping addicts addicted was inability to tolerate withdrawal, but today the portrayal of “withdrawal is the worst thing ever” (seriously, two characters become functioning alcoholics and they both experience several days of delirium tremens, which the internet tells me happens to only 5% of people and usually those with the worst addictions) combined with “but once you get through withdrawal you’ll be fine!” (despite being in the same environment with the same stressors and no new coping mechanisms) seems absurd. The author’s attack on the American medical system seems likewise uninformed: the whole plotline about the developmentally disabled homeless woman who needs surgery but can’t afford it ignores the existence of Medicaid for the Disabled, which was available at the time of writing and is never mentioned to be repealed. (There’s so much wrong with our medical system, it shouldn’t be that hard to find a problem that really exists! Also, I wasn’t sure the protagonists were really the best vehicle for this outrage: they come from a hierarchical society of nobles and commoners; do those at the bottom really get top medical care? Wouldn’t people from a society with no modern medicine have some feelings about the idea of open-heart surgery? Awe or horror probably depends on the person, but something.) That’s a lot of complaints, I realize, for a book that was mostly pleasant reading. It does some things very well: for instance, the portrayal of the Christian couple who help the family, and their very different and evolving understandings of their religion, is a highlight. That’s all very real and heartfelt. But then too, it throws into relief how much less textured the main family’s relationship with their own religion is: because ultimately they’re just here to show us something about ourselves. With that as the goal, it’s no surprise that their own world is never fully fleshed out, and the novel is rather less than satisfying. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 18, 2024
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Apr 21, 2024
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Mar 06, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 0063315742
| 3.68
| 560
| Oct 17, 2023
| Oct 17, 2023
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liked it
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After reading a couple years of Best American Short Stories and criticizing this year’s collection for including no speculative or experimental work,
After reading a couple years of Best American Short Stories and criticizing this year’s collection for including no speculative or experimental work, I decided to check out this anthology—all speculative, of course, and this batch highly experimental in form and structure. To the extent guest editor Kuang chose the stories (series editor Adams picks 80 by reading widely in magazines, collections and anthologies; the guest editor narrows it to 20), her introduction makes her philosophy clear: her primary criterion was “commitment to the bit,” with a strong preference for gonzo, bonkers, and sometimes political stories. They are concept-heavy, giving me new appreciation for the character-driven stories in BASS 2023. It is an interesting and diverse batch of stories—in topic and structure as well as author and character identity—but I only liked about 8 out of 20, and loved none, even the couple from authors whose work I’ve loved before. Notes on the individual stories: “Readings in the Slantwise Sciences” by Sofia Samatar: I love Samatar’s work—seriously, go check out her collection—but this is a wild choice to begin the anthology because it isn’t even a story, it’s a writing exercise. Samatar was going stir crazy during lockdown and rewrote three National Geographic articles to be surreal and fantastical. The articles have no connection to each other and while I rather liked the use of fairies as a metaphor for insect die-off, the piece overall is a strange choice. “Air to Shape Lungs” by Shingai Njeri Kagunda: Another strange choice for a first impression. The author comes up with a fantasy concept to symbolize opposition to borders and racism, writes a 3-page description of said concept and stops there, without actual plot or characters. “Beginnings” by Kristina Ten: The first one I sort of liked, a poignant little suburban fairy tale that kept me guessing about where we were and what was really going on. Not sure why the author thinks all fairy tales end happily, though. “Sparrows” by Susan Palwick: A favorite. While the world is falling apart, a lonely college student holes up in her dorm to finish her Shakespeare paper, and it’s a resonant exploration of meaning in life, what we do when death is imminent, and where the world might be headed. I’m excited to see this author has written novels (better yet, not about the apocalypse)—my biggest find of the anthology. “The Six Deaths of the Saint” by Alix Harrow: The most popular of the anthology, and I see why and mostly agree. An exciting tale of love and war with twists that pack a punch, and emotional and thematic resonance. I didn’t entirely love the ending: (view spoiler)[it felt like a “everything you needed, you had all along” message, which given that they were starving orphans, was not true. (hide spoiler)] But overall I probably liked this better than the novel I’ve read from Harrow and see why people love her short fiction. “Termination Stories for the Cyberpunk Dystopia Protagonist” by Isabel J. Kim: I’ve heard great things about this author, but this is a very meta takedown of a subgenre I don’t read, which did very little for me. “Men, Women and Chainsaws” by Stephen Graham Jones: A twist on horror tropes, which will likely work better for people who like horror. I admired the rare realistic depiction of average small-town young adults—not bookish, or solitary and eccentric, the way authors tend to prefer their leads; the protagonist works at a car dealership but wishes she was a hair stylist, lives in a trailer with roommates and parties hard at bonfires on the weekend—but didn’t otherwise enjoy it. The ending felt particularly off: (view spoiler)[the protagonist is basically a psychopath, murdering her ex for breaking up with her, but the story doesn’t embrace that and even vindicates her at the end. (hide spoiler)] “Rabbit Test” by Samantha Mills: Part dystopian tale, part historical review, all op-ed about reproductive rights in America. It’s effective—I can see it being read at conferences in years to come, and if you’re feeling outraged about recent Supreme Court decisions and want validation, this story is a great choice. I would have liked a little more from the characters. “There are No Monsters at Rancho Buenavista” by Isabel Cañas: A flash fiction monster story. It’s fine but not helped by putting the author’s note up front—I’m not convinced this is the subversion she thinks it is. “Murder by Pixel” by S.L. Huang: This reads like a feature in a news magazine—impressively so; fiction authors rarely mimic the style of anything so well. What happens when chatbot AIs are set loose to contact people? The story gives us a scenario, inventing only the people involved, and giving us even (presumably fictional) interviews with professionals and the (real) history of AI. A strong work, to be engaged with as a thinkpiece more so than a story. “White Water, Blue Ocean” by Linda Raquel Nieves Perez: The worst-written story in the collection, featuring a Puerto Rican(?) family under a curse (or perhaps a poorly-thought-out blessing from a clueless spirit). Full of abrupt emotional shifts and awkward exposition, and with a narrator who believes the entire world revolves around their gender identity. “The CRISPR Cookbook” by MKRNYILGLD: Formatted as an instruction manual for the science-inclined who need to cook up their own abortions in an oppressive world. Suffers from being Abortion Story #2 and less effective than Abortion Story #1; I’d have rather read the actual story of a scientist doing this than the manual she refers to. “Three Mothers Mountain” by Nathan Ballingrud: A well-written story if you’re interested in Appalachian fairy tales blended with horror. I don’t like horror and found it gross and sad. The kids should’ve talked to their teachers. “The Odyssey Problem” by Chris Willrich: A spacefaring riff on “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” in which several completely opposed—but all sensible by their own terms—systems of morality run into each other in what feels like escalating moral oneupmanship. I see why some people love this, and it’s certainly confident, blazing ahead and demanding readers keep up. But my biggest takeaway was “never assume you’ve reached the apex of moral progress,” which is pretty obvious, and its characters are no more than props. Why make a rescued Omelas child your narrator if you refuse to do pathos? Plus, Willrich ignores Le Guin’s points about the long-term effects—intellectual, linguistic, physical—that such a childhood would have. “Pellargonia” by Theodora Goss: Three teens with a worldbuilding hobby accidentally create a country, and the story is in the form of a letter to the relevant journal asking for help. Maybe I’m a curmudgeon for disliking it, as most readers found it charming, but the constant interjections interrupt the flow and it is not believable as a letter to an academic journal (nor did it make me believe these kids could’ve successfully passed off their prior work). Also, it felt like it was hiding the fact that this is a story about clueless Americans screwing things up for everyone by messing with countries they don’t understand behind the tired “every kid in the friend group has a different diversity point” trope. Maybe it’s subtly making the point that identity politics don’t absolve you of responsibility for your actions, or maybe that’s giving it too much credit. “Pre-Simulation Consultation” by Kim Fu: Happily, I liked this one: a story in the form of a transcript between a customer and employee, negotiating a virtual reality experience. We learn a fair bit indirectly about both of the characters, it’s a fun but thoughtful look at corporate and legal handling of new technologies, and the end is strong. “In the Beginning of Me, I Was a Bird” by Maria Dong: Ugh. A vibes story I definitely didn’t vibe with. A depressing premise (all life is dying off, and humans are making it worse by their spirits parasitically invading other species and killing them off even faster), that’s apparently supposed to be counterbalanced by the mystical connection between two souls, but those souls are parasites and we’re given no reason to care about them, and no hope. Also, the protagonist didn’t begin as a bird. “The Difference Between Love and Time” by Catherynne Valente: A bonkers story about a woman’s turbulent lifelong romantic relationship with the space-time continuum, which is always appearing in different forms. I can see why people like it but this one was just too out there for me, not surprising since Valente’s recent novels have been too. My buddy read partner, who liked it, describes it as “a story of metaphysics and madness.” “Folk Hero Motifs in Tales Told by the Dead” by KT Bryski: A good one. In a sort of purgatory, this story alternates between the poignant story of the dead narrator, and trickster stories recognizable in inspiration but twisted to feature the dead. Clever and meaningful and strange. “Cumulative Ethical Guidelines for Mid-Range Interstellar Storytellers” by Malka Older: I can see why others would find this unremarkable, but for me it was the perfect end to the anthology. It reads like a crowdsourced Google Doc put together by and for storytellers working on spaceships. It sneaks in a lot of worldbuilding while sounding like the kinds of comments people actually write, and I found it fun and sweet. Overall, then, lots of ups and downs, a few new authors discovered. Worth the read for me but hard to recommend. I might try another volume in a different year to see whether it’s the guest editor’s taste that doesn’t quite agree with me, or the series editor’s. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 02, 2024
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Mar 28, 2024
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Feb 05, 2024
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||||
| 1616964146
| 9781616964146
| 1616964146
| 4.04
| 444
| Apr 23, 2024
| Apr 23, 2024
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really liked it
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An enjoyable and intense steampunk fantasy novel about authoritarianism, abuse and complicity, the role of religion and the military in society—I enjo
An enjoyable and intense steampunk fantasy novel about authoritarianism, abuse and complicity, the role of religion and the military in society—I enjoyed this one a lot, read it quickly, and was left with a lot to think about. This book follows a warrior named Zemolai in two separate timelines, developed in alternating chapters. In the front story, Zemolai is around 40 and growing dissatisfied with the military cult she belongs to, when a chance decision causes her to be brutally expelled and she’s forced to reckon with her history and question everything she believed to be true. In the backstory, she’s a young teenager nicknamed Zenya, joining the military cult and falling under the sway of a charismatic and sinister mentor, Vodaya. I usually enjoy backstory/frontstory split narratives, and I enjoyed this one, finding the structure to increase tension and keep me wanting more from both stories. The two timelines connect well, revealing new information just as it becomes relevant, and fleshing out Zemolai’s experiences. The plot is fast-paced and compelling, and Zemolai is a complex and engaging character. Readers who want to agree with the protagonist’s every decision may struggle, but I loved her slow deconstruction arc, the way the values of her group and Vodaya continue to hold sway even once she’s out, because of course they do. It felt real and honest when so much fantasy has protagonists immediately discard any beliefs the reader might disapprove. And the reasons Zemolai falls prey to Vodaya and her ideology feel very real too—looking back, it all seems inevitable, no shortcuts or false notes. This story also provides a fascinating context to explore the dynamics of abuse, because there isn’t a script for this: it made me think about the genuine disagreements that happen in the workplace every day about what’s reasonable to expect, and left me wondering where someone in the military would identify the lines and where they’re crossed here. There are aspects of Vodaya that will be immediately recognizable to anyone who’s had a bad boss, or encountered an authoritarian temperament with power (this is unfortunately timely). But I was also pleased to learn more than I expected (even if still less than I wanted) about what made Vodaya who she is, recontextualizing prior scenes. Reflecting on the book a few weeks after finishing, what’s most striking to me is what’s not in it. There are a lot of questions about the nature of the gods, which I found very engaging, and we don’t get definitive answers, which I loved—this isn’t a neat little mystery, not everything in life has a firm answer; the important thing isn’t discovering the truth but how people handle the reality of not knowing. It initially appeared that we also never got (view spoiler)[the heretic scholar’s paper, until I realized that’s what the infodumpy interludes were: a fun realization except that the paper itself is so juvenile. I mean, how incredibly childish to interpret the amount that someone sleeps as primarily a comment on how much they love you. (hide spoiler)] I appreciated that there’s no romance arc: there isn’t really room for it and it’s nice to see women getting stories that don’t depend on that (though I’d have liked a brief paragraph fleshing out the story behind Zemolai’s little “hormones lie”!). And I was relieved that Zemolai and Vodaya’s relationship is not sexual, as so often happens in fiction. This leads into the omissions I was less thrilled with: most of Zemolai’s life, for one. Despite that title and cover, we see her as a Winged warrior for only a couple of pages at the beginning, and come away with little sense of the reasons for her fall from grace (was it just because she was aging? But people older than her still seemed to be at peak performance). We learn almost nothing about the world outside this city-state, leaving me questioning why targeted rebels never think to go into exile. There’s almost no physical description of characters, and much of it consists of weird hair and eye colors that made them difficult to picture (I wound up envisioning Zemolai as a light-skinned black woman with cornrows, although as the names are quasi-Russian that probably wasn’t intended, and don’t have a coherent mental picture of anyone else). Finally, I have mixed feelings about the fantasy trend toward not acknowledging gender or sex differences: on the one hand, it’s great to see women in fantasy whose stories aren’t about romance or Being A Woman; on the other, this is a book about women in the military that entirely refuses to engage with the fact that they are women in the military. I think for instance that Vodaya’s becoming the best warrior of her generation despite being a woman probably explains a lot about her unreasonable expectations for her students, but that’s never indicated by the text. To me the story could only have been improved by showing the pressures and bonds that exist in that type of environment. Most of that, of course, is a matter of taste. As far as actual criticisms, I do think there’s room for growth in terms of character development and prose (though both are good; Mills has a distinctive voice and the characters are believable and have some texture). And I especially hope that in future books she’ll trust her readers more. There’s just a little too much spelling things out at times, a little too much telling the reader what to think (for instance, that Zemolai’s current actions don’t make up for her past; that kind of moral judgment is the reader’s prerogative). This is ameliorated to an extent by the fact that this book isn’t pushing the hottest issues: for instance, Zemolai’s wrestling with identity is not about anything you might check on a form, but a philosophical question about whether one is always the same person. (I will pass on some good advice I received about the Afterword: do not roll into it immediately upon finishing the novel. It consists of Mills explaining all her themes and is best read after a break.) Overall though, I liked this a lot. It grabbed me, pulled me in and was worth the ride, and it’s more interesting and worthy of discussion than most recent fantasy I have read. I’ll be looking out for Mills’s next book and I would recommend this one. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 31, 2024
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Jun 07, 2024
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Feb 04, 2024
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Paperback
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| 1612199097
| 9781612199092
| 1612199097
| 3.80
| 5,208
| Aug 01, 2006
| Jul 13, 2021
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liked it
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A unique, translated work of fantasy/magic realism—either a collection of mystery stories with a common narrator, or a highly episodic novel. In a fic
A unique, translated work of fantasy/magic realism—either a collection of mystery stories with a common narrator, or a highly episodic novel. In a fictional city in contemporary China, a zoology-student-turned-journalist/romance writer researches different species of “beasts,” which each appear mostly human but with a couple of key differences. Each of the nine chapters focuses on a different beast, with some mystery about their true nature. Continuity is provided by the narrator, who learns more about herself and the people around her, as well as the secondary cast. This is a well-written book, which seems to have caught the attention of a lot of people—endorsements from major newspapers, and there’s a fair amount of lit crit out there about it as well. Interestingly, it was first translated into English 14 years after its initial publication in Mandarin/Sichuanese. The author is from Sichuan but based in England. However, while appreciating that the book clearly has a lot of merit in terms of themes, social commentary, etc., I struggled with it, which I think is largely due to the cultural gap. Speculative fiction is often difficult in translation, reliant on tropes as it is; it was interesting to see how things work out differently than you’d expect in a work written in English (the beasts are generally assumed to be benign but turn out to be violent or dangerous, whereas in English you’d expect the opposite), and there are places where I was pretty sure I was getting the commentary, as in a chapter involving a government crackdown in response to uprisings in Southeast Asia. It was certainly interesting to see a fantasy that seems to be a meditation on regional differences and rootlessness in modern China, the way newly-built cities are populated almost entirely by people from far-flung provinces (for which I’m guessing the beasts are a metaphor). But often I found the resolutions to chapters difficult to understand, and I wasn’t always sure how to interpret particular elements. Like many English-language readers, I also found the story hard to connect with on an emotional level, which after reading a whole book on cultural influences on emotion, I suspect is because my expectations are different from the original audience’s. The narrator has strong emotions but they tend to be shown entirely through external actions, without building up to that through descriptions of how the emotion feels in the body or checking in on her feelings when they aren’t being enacted. So it can feel strange and abrupt when she, say, collapses in tears. The writing style is quite spare, and perhaps the emotion would have been implicit for a Chinese audience in a way it was not for me. At any rate, the book is well-written, unique, and fairly short, so I don’t regret giving it a try. But I don’t typically enjoy episodic novels, so starting fresh in each chapter and the way previously mentioned beasts never come up again was a hurdle for me, in addition to the issues mentioned above. Overall I struggled more than I enjoyed it, and might not have finished but for a book club and my desire to try more works of translated fantasy. Worth a look though if it piques your interest. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 08, 2024
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Jun 22, 2024
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Jan 10, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 0593547764
| 9780593547762
| 0593547764
| 4.18
| 3,812
| Aug 08, 2023
| Aug 08, 2023
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it was ok
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2.5 stars This is a hard book to rate because objectively it is not very good, and yet it is engaging. Like many Greek myth retellings focused on heroi 2.5 stars This is a hard book to rate because objectively it is not very good, and yet it is engaging. Like many Greek myth retellings focused on heroines with passive roles in their originals, it struggles with plot: there’s no stakes or momentum to the first half of the book, in which the sisters wander about finding themselves and I debated whether to abandon it (the characters were just endearing enough that I kept reading, but it was a close call). The second half, once the events of the myth kick off, is much more plot-focused and compelling, as well as a tearjerker. Also like many current retellings, it’s often modern in easy, lazy ways, and it perhaps thinks its feminism is more groundbreaking than it is—though to be fair, it’s better feminism than most Greek myth retellings I’ve read. It does at least focus on women and their relationships, and seems genuinely interested in how systemic forces cause people to treat others badly; it maintains a level of sympathy and understanding for flawed women rather than simply writing them off as bitches, as, say, Circe does. It needs better character work to be great, though: the sisters are engaging and sometimes endearing, but not interesting or complex. Though technically they are triplets and all very-long-lived young women, each has a clearly defined role. Stheno is the mother, anxious and selfless and guilt-ridden; Euryale the teenager, moody and self-centered and boy-crazy; Medusa the baby, sweet and enthusiastic and oblivious. There are aspects of the characters and their relationships that are well-written and sweet, but they are ultimately a bit static, a bit two-dimensional. As for the writing, lots of dialogue and short paragraphs mean the pages turn quickly, but it can be awkward, giving the impression Bear thought to level up her prose through hasty thesaurus use rather than understanding what makes great writing. (While a large vocabulary is an important tool, sophistication is mostly about syntax. Also, you need to know the words you use!) Another reviewer shared a particularly unfortunate passage that encapsulates the problem well: “I sheltered her too much,” she told Euryale, for despite their tenuous start, Desma had come to appreciate Euryale’s sagacity - especially compared to Medusa’s and Semele’s penchant for the quixotic. Aside from the clumsiness, the connotations aren’t quite right (for instance, Euryale may be sharp but she is not wise). And then there are places where Bear gets a word outright wrong, such as the moment when Euryale, trying to call the attention of someone lost in contemplation, “extemporized into her hand”—oops! Bear presumably meant “expectorated,” and could’ve avoided the problem altogether by just saying “coughed.” I also had to chuckle at her making a point of using the phrase “enslaved people” rather than “slaves” (despite none of her point-of-view characters having the shift in perspective this language is intended to express)… until she hit the phrase “servants and slaves,” couldn’t figure out how to translate it without absurdity, and gave up. Overall, this book could’ve used another round of copyediting, though it does seem to improve a bit as it goes. Finally, some frustrating aspects of the sisters’ journeys feel a bit contrived or under-explored. Euryale makes a wild decision toward the end that could’ve used more fleshing out: (view spoiler)[she decides to have a child by her sister’s rapist—and she witnessed the rape! I understand she was using Poseidon for a child at this point rather than being into him, but did she consider any other father? How could she stomach this? Also, her denial around Medusa’s rape is hard to understand when, again, she witnessed it—this was not an ambiguous situation. I wanted Euryale’s thought process explored beyond just her feeling betrayed. (hide spoiler)] Stheno, meanwhile, has a “big moment of finding her voice” that consists of shouting stupid things at a powerful person in a volatile moment, and maybe the author intended to critique the trope of talking like a fool equaling empowerment (given that the consequences are horrible), but I was dissatisfied with the lack of reflection after the fact; ultimately the moment just felt contrived in service of plot. (view spoiler)[Not helped by the fact that moments before, Stheno was so afraid of Poseidon that she wouldn’t even interrupt his brutal rape of her sister. And then she turns around and threatens another Olympian? Stheno possesses the ability to handle this moment, by focusing exclusively on Poseidon’s culpability, but she doesn’t and there’s no convincing reason why not beyond “then the myth wouldn’t happen.” (hide spoiler)] Finally, there’s the tragic lesbian thing, about which I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, it’s a good emotional hook that casts an interesting new light on the motivations of various characters, and I think there’s a lot of honesty to its portrayal of the effects of homophobia in its permutations along lines of class and power. On the other hand, I’m not fully convinced about the deviation from canon (view spoiler)[specifically, making Athena a lesbian rather than uninterested in sex (hide spoiler)], and this version imposes a modern interpretation rather than seeking to understand why character actions made sense to the Greeks. It also leaves some character decisions not quite making sense: (view spoiler)[turning the sisters into monsters doesn’t actually silence them. Anyway, Poseidon is the real threat here and will either start making allegations at some point or have an endless font of blackmail material. (hide spoiler)] And ultimately, it mostly feels like a plot device. In the end, I don’t know whether I’m glad I read this or not. It’s an engaging book that did manage to get its hooks in me. But it could have been better. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 06, 2024
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Jul 26, 2024
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Jan 04, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 1649374178
| 9781649374172
| 1649374178
| 4.35
| 1,348,473
| Nov 07, 2023
| Nov 07, 2023
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liked it
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I have what for me is an unusual relationship with this series. I don’t think it’s a great work of art, but it is a lot of fun. I am reading them as a
I have what for me is an unusual relationship with this series. I don’t think it’s a great work of art, but it is a lot of fun. I am reading them as a buddy read and they are ideal for that, or for anyone who wants to engage with a fandom: they are plot-heavy books chock-full of secrets and hidden agendas and fertile ground for speculation of every sort. The series is also an interesting mashup of narrative elements and styles: I would call it epic fantasy for an audience whose first love was YA, as written by an author steeped in American military culture and romance novels. None of these are elements I love on their own, but it’s fun to see how Yarros mixes them together. Iron Flame picks up right where Fourth Wing left off, and the plot does not slow down: just as much happens here as in the first, with lots of new revelations, new characters, new information about the world, and some big events, most of which I definitely was not expecting. Overall it was a satisfying story, and while I’m not fully convinced it needed to be 140 pages longer than Fourth Wing (a few of these scenarios could have been cut down a bit), it left me very interested to see what would happen next. One thing I think Yarros struggles with a bit here is particularly interesting to me. This series has just as many characters as your typical epic fantasy, but unlike most, only one point-of-view. Which results in Violet having the fairly unique opportunity among fictional protagonists to have about as many people in her life as you’d expect from a real person! Especially a person who is basically attending fantasy West Point. Violet has: - 1 love interest - 2 dragons - 3 close relatives - 3 ride-or-die squadmates - 1 non-military nerd friend - 1 antagonistic quasi-friend - 2 messy situations where one person is deeply invested while the other thinks they are sworn enemies Plus a variety of other relationships with somewhat less investment: her doctor; several professors who seem invested in her success; a former mentor who can no longer be trusted; various peripheral squadmates, at least two of whom will obviously have a significant future role. This is a lot of characters to develop and relationships to maintain (not counting the 3+ actual sworn enemies since those don’t need maintenance), which is probably why most books don’t try. And I don’t think Yarros is entirely successful, in that characters often seem to drop off the radar despite living in the same place, and Violet’s squadmates and friends tend to have one-note personalities, if that. But as someone who gets tired of the limited relationship options usually available to protagonists (normally you get about 3 significant people, including 1-2 love interests and a parent or mentor), it was fun to see someone write an actually connected character. And I enjoy the family drama in these books a lot, while being less invested in the dragons and the romance than many readers. Well, this installment definitely delivers on the family drama front. Of course, like many hastily-written-but-huge fantasy sequels, there are writing tics: eyes flare, shoulders dip, “lectures” is frequently used as a dialogue tag, and most confusingly, the act of someone putting their hand in another’s hair is repeatedly described with the verb “spear.” I suppose all that tracks with the use of the first person present (Violet doesn’t have time to stop and think about her word choice either, and in any case first person present is not a stylistic choice from which I have high literary expectations). There are other nits I could pick, too: these books dump more trauma than they have time to deal with, and the characters don’t always feel quite like products of their world. Thus far each volume has one truly absurd fight scene in which Violet wins in a head-scratchingly convoluted way. Overall though, this was a fun read, with its heart very much in the right place, and despite my middling rating, I find myself resonating far more with fans of the series than its detractors. I’ll definitely read the next when it’s released, and I’ll fully enjoy theorycrafting in the meanwhile. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 07, 2023
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Nov 24, 2023
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Oct 14, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 1335915842
| 9781335915849
| 1335915842
| 4.01
| 40,120
| Oct 11, 2022
| Oct 11, 2022
|
Read through page 65. This one’s on me, because I don’t actually like YA, but at first glance it seemed like this would be cute and fun. Once I began
Read through page 65. This one’s on me, because I don’t actually like YA, but at first glance it seemed like this would be cute and fun. Once I began reading it, though, it turned out to be standard YA: little depth, a highly telegraphed romance-to-be. Does the first present present itself resist characterization, or it just used by authors unable to or uninterested in providing it? Because not only is it a distractingly artificial mode of storytelling, everyone who uses it sounds exactly the same. I also thought the protagonist accepted far too quickly that she was able to turn invisible, given that she lives in the real world, which feels like a concession to those people who complain about protagonists taking a long time to believe in magic when, well, wouldn’t you? Readers know it’s a fantasy novel but the characters don’t. Still, my biggest suspension-of-disbelief-breaking moment was when the 17-year-old heroine, who has been at her boarding school for 5 years and apparently never had any friends or social group (nor a boyfriend or anything else that might substitute for that), suddenly realizes this apparently for the first time. Honestly, I thought that was made clear in the preceding scene when she arrives in the auditorium, has no one to gravitate towards and so goes to sit with her roommate, who accepts it but clearly wasn’t saving that seat for her. She’s in high school, you’re telling me similar scenes don’t play out every day? At that age, in that environment, there’s no way someone with a precarious friend situation is not keenly aware of it, who they’re with during social time and how much they want each other there. In the end it feels like this girl just didn’t fully exist before the book began, again highlighting the artificiality of the whole exercise. ...more |
Notes are private!
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0
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not set
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not set
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Sep 30, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 1250847389
| 9781250847386
| 1250847389
| 3.69
| 3,539
| Jul 11, 2023
| Jul 11, 2023
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it was amazing
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This one is incredible. A literary fantasy that stands out for its use of language, inventiveness and the complexity of its world, coming from a fully
This one is incredible. A literary fantasy that stands out for its use of language, inventiveness and the complexity of its world, coming from a fully non-western perspective and commenting on politics and religion in South Asia rather than the well-worn American issues. Major Le Guin vibes for me, by an author from a very different walk of life but with a similar command of language, understanding of the real world rather than reliance on fictional tropes, and complexity of setting and theme. The book centers on a young man named Fetter, who has rejected his upbringing as an assassin meant to kill his father, and who is apparently a riff on the Buddha’s son Rāhula. (There is a lot of commentary on Buddhism in this book, which looks very different from a Sri Lankan perspective than a western one—religious violence is a major theme.) If you’re looking for a plot-driven novel, you’ll be disappointed; the first half mostly drifts from one intriguing scenario to the next, and while the second half grabbed my attention more, plot is never the primary aim. It’s not really character-driven either, with a bit more distance than your usual genre fiction, but the characters are deftly and believably drawn and I did wind up caring about them. (There’s a horrifying moment late in the book where the author definitely identifies all my favorites.) Instead, I’d say this book is driven most by setting, themes, and style. And it’s a fascinatingly detailed and complex setting, developed in a compact way that leaves plenty beneath the surface; the themes feel fresh and urgent; and Chandrasekera’s command of language can turn a reader green with envy, especially given this is a debut. There’s a degree of magic realism or simply surrealism, which you have to just roll with but which makes for a beautiful journey, with some use of deliberate paradox that you have to accept to see the deeper meaning. There’s an extended sequence in the second half that others have called Kafkaeseque but that reminded me for whatever reason for the Sunderbans sequence in Midnight’s Children, a sort of unreality mixed with hyperreality in which the whole world becomes a prison. But honestly, I loved most of the book’s sequences, and the sharp contrasts among the different settings and ways of life—the author’s vision and knowledge seems unlimited. And although I’m sure plenty of the political and religious commentary went over my head, it was exciting to see elements I recognized (from the real world, not other fantasy), like the monks on TV whose causes include things like starving themselves to protest the “wrong” castes entering particular lines of work, and be able to go, “oh, yeah! Gandhi did that!” In the end, a uniquely brilliant book that isn’t what most genre fans are looking for, and that’s hard for me to fully describe, but one that blows open the doors to what fantasy can do. I’m not sure what to say about the fact that this is Chandrasekera’s first book: where is left to go from here? ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 04, 2024
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May 18, 2024
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Sep 13, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 0063348276
| 9780063348271
| 3.90
| 37,643
| Jan 19, 2023
| Sep 12, 2023
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did not like it
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Readers with different tastes might enjoy it, but this book, rather impressively, fails at everything I’m looking for in a novel. I was ready to tap o
Readers with different tastes might enjoy it, but this book, rather impressively, fails at everything I’m looking for in a novel. I was ready to tap out at 60 pages, and finished only because it’s short and was a buddy read. Godkiller is a traditional quest fantasy featuring all the most hackneyed tropes: a motley band on a quest, orphans with murdered families, meetings and fights in taverns, sneaking around via sewers, cliff falls “no one could survive” which in fact everyone survives, slow-mo aestheticized violence and the blowing off of head injuries, etc. etc. It has a neat concept: roving spirits, fed by prayer, ascend to godhood and demand more and more of their followers. In the aftermath of a war between godly factions, gods are outlawed, and a woman who hunts them tries to help a girl who is stuck with one get rid of it, joined by an ex-knight seeking divine help for his king. Sadly, the execution let me down in just about every way possible. Plot: This is just the most boring novel I’ve read in ages. While never exactly a fan of quests, I can’t recall ever being this bored by one outside of a bloated doorstopper sequel. (By comparison, this novel is 288 pages long.) The quest has no meaningful stakes, as the reader is given no reason to care about the king, and the girl and god have little need to separate. There’s no sense of urgency or threat, no real danger (the author half-heartedly throws in some random monster encounters to try to spice things up, but even those occur on a clockwork schedule quickly deduced by the characters, and are easily defeated). Plot beats are predictable and action scenes plod. And then in the end it turns out (view spoiler)[the quest was unnecessary all along: the king wasn’t dying and the girl and god decide to stick together. Whoop-de-doo. (hide spoiler)] Characters: The characters are very stock, the godkiller, Kissen, being the only one with any noticeable personality, and even she is two-dimensional. They follow well-trodden paths through standard relationship beats. Emotions appear out of nowhere to be expressed in the strongest possible terms for a couple of sentences, then disappear again. Disruptive and interesting elements are quickly dismissed: the trapped god is presented early on as an addict, whose cravings for prayer and offerings overcome whatever good intentions he has, and there’s an interesting bit where he gains power and immediately goes too far… only to be hastily pulled back with the world’s weakest and most rushed redemption arc, in which feeling a little bad is somehow enough and his protecting the person his life depends on is given far more weight than it deserves. From there on out he’s no different from a standard fantasy magical companion animal. Point-of-Views: All four party members get a point-of-view, and although it’s in the third person you’ll definitely need those chapter headings telling you whose you’re in, because the author herself seems to lose track. One character’s feelings will be shared while in another character’s POV, or we get exposition that doesn’t fit the POV at all. Don’t let the fact we’re in the head of a 12-year-old who has never left home before prevent this from being what we see when she looks out on fallow, uneven land: As they descended the paths grew wide, and then the trees were gone altogether. The mountainsides near them were gutted and pockmarked, torn open for stone, the quarries now brown, scrubby and abandoned. New saplings were growing in straggles on the slopes that had long ago been stripped of trees for the famous Blanraden timber and shipping yards. Below them flatlands spread from the sea cliffs inwards. Farms and fields, now marked only by the strangely rippled lines of unchecked growth. Worldbuilding: If fantasy concepts are your primary interest in worldbuilding, you may like this. Personally, I’m more interested in realism and immersion, and unfortunately this world has nothing to it but the god concept. Otherwise, it’s just your standard-issue Hollywood-medieval, generally appearing poorly-thought-through (for instance, having the population gathered in cities while rural areas appear uninhabited, even along main roads). Writing: Kaner has a dull prose style, with a tendency to devote lots of words to place descriptions that are nonetheless not particularly vivid. The occasional sentence just doesn’t make sense: “Elo’s bags were searched by the yellow-sashed guard as he entered Lesscia’s gates, but his belongings were not enough to constitute trading items that might damage manuscripts.” What does this mean? What does the amount of baggage a traveler is carrying, whether or not for trade, have to do with damage to manuscripts? Representation: For some readers this will be a definite win: a queernorm world with lots of bisexual and disabled representation. Perhaps because worlds where most people are in same-sex relationships are not my personal fantasy, that aspect mostly left me wondering how they maintain birth rates (maybe they don’t, hence all the wilderness?). On the disability representation, Kissen is missing a leg and I do think Kaner has done a good job researching and depicting life as an amputee… in the 21st century, with a state-of-the-art prosthetic. Then we’re introduced to a deaf side character and it turns out this kingdom has a uniform national sign language: do they have a school for the deaf? Which servants and beggar children sold as slaves all somehow managed to attend? Despite the fact that the kingdom doesn’t actually seem to have an educational system at all? (Maybe Kaner thinks sign language is inborn, like a sixth sense for historical land usage.) Overall I think the author’s heart is in the right place but doubt she has stopped for one single minute to research or consider what life with disabilities looked like in the pre-modern world. Ending: After slogging through all of that, it turns out this book does not work as a standalone, almost no questions are answered, most of the answers given are unsatisfying (view spoiler)[really, the guy who cursed Elo was just some random dude? After all that talk about how great sacrifice was required? (hide spoiler)] and the real story is only just beginning. A big no thank you from me to any further volumes in this series. Obviously, some readers like this sort of thing, and at least the book didn’t offend me… except in its low standards for literary quality. Good riddance, I say. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 11, 2024
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May 26, 2024
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Aug 29, 2023
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Paperback
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| 1649374046
| 9781649374042
| 1649374046
| 4.57
| 2,026,426
| May 02, 2023
| May 02, 2023
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liked it
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Under ordinary circumstances I wouldn’t have read this book, but every once in awhile I get curious about some massive bestseller, and this sounded mo
Under ordinary circumstances I wouldn’t have read this book, but every once in awhile I get curious about some massive bestseller, and this sounded more to my taste than other popular fantasy romances. Under ordinary circumstances, if I did read it I’d probably have given 2 stars, since it is not exactly an exemplar of prose or character depth. But a couple of factors intervened here. First, I spent a little too much time in corners of the internet where the book is derided, for reasons that seem mostly indicative of a tendency to sneer at wish-fulfillment aimed at women. Yes, it’s the lower end of fantasy, in the literary sense, but so are the likes of Sanderson, Lynch, and plenty more popular male authors whose fans have no business trashing this. Second, I read it as a buddy read with someone who was emphatically here to have fun, resulting in several evenings debating dragon conspiracy theories as we went, and in the end I enjoyed it and plan to (buddy) read the sequel. So while I can’t necessarily say it is a good book in any kind of objective sense, with the right attitude it is definitely a fun one. That said, the rest of this is less a proper review, and more some notes on my reactions. Some elements I enjoyed: - This is essentially a mashup of YA dystopian elements with a high fantasy setting and what seems to be shaping up to be an epic fantasy plot, alongside a central romance. It’s a fun combination, especially if you haven’t oversaturated on YA dystopias: I love a good slow realization that (view spoiler)[the protagonist’s country are not the good guys (hide spoiler)] in fantasy, and Yarros does a strong job of hiding and drip-feeding that while foregrounding more obvious elements. The last 100 pages or so, where we begin to get some reveals, are particularly exciting, creating fertile ground for sequels. - The protagonist, Violet, is enrolled in the fantasy equivalent of special forces training while dealing with a lifelong (invisible) physical disability. This is well-handled, and increases the stakes; it’s fun to see Violet work around her limitations while making the most of her advantages (chiefly, being a legacy student). - The family drama has me hooked. Violet’s sister Mira is probably my favorite character, and their strong relationship is a highlight. I also have a lot of questions about what their mom is up to. - It’s nice to read sex scenes focused on what is pleasurable for women (even a lot of older wish fulfillment aimed at women did not do this!) and that generally come across as good and healthy sex. For a book largely being read by younger women for the romance, this is a much healthier example than in most bestsellers: they’re about the same age, the power imbalances average out to roughly equal, there is mutual respect, and enthusiastic consent is assumed by both parties to be a prerequisite for good sex. Some places where my reaction was more mixed: - It’s a very plot-driven book, and while the beginning and end are strong, the middle sags a bit. I started to get a bit tired of the school setting and its artificial challenges (though I did enjoy the scenes that felt right out of a military memoir). Fortunately the page time spent on school events is much reduced in the second half. - Although not classified as YA, the book is told in a bog-standard YA first person present tense voice, and at times the prose gets a little clunky. Some readers have criticized the use of modern colloquial language but I think that actually saves the writing: it allows for the sort of humor and snark that suits the characters and their environment, and I’m willing to accept the translation convention. - I remain largely indifferent to the two main draws for most readers: the dragons (they are here, they play major roles, they have attitude; if you love dragons you’ll probably love them) and the romance. For my taste, the romance depends too heavily on physical attraction, and I’d have liked more angst and less bad-boy-master-of-all-skills from the love interest. That said, it’s not bad and I’m not confused about why many readers love it. - Outside of Violet’s family and love life, the secondary characters are too flat to inspire any real investment, her squadmates being a particularly disappointing example. There is also a two-dimensionally boring bully. - Exposition can be clumsy, particularly at the start. Yes, the author has Violet straight-up exposit the map to the reader in the midst of a life-or-death trial early on (for audiobook readers? Who even wants this?). The chapter epigraphs work much better to provide hints about the world, and at times the other characters. - Some elements are just silly and over-the-top. Students spar with sharpened knives and mostly come out fine. Violet at one point wins a fight by shoving something her opponent is allergic to into his mouth, without having any way of knowing he’s that allergic, and despite having access to more reliable poisons and, you know, knives. Etc. If you’ve ever read a slightly gonzo fantasy book before, you’ll know what to expect here. In the end though, I did have fun, finding it fast, compelling reading that left me with a lot of questions about what happens next. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 04, 2023
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Oct 14, 2023
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Jul 18, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 1250842468
| 9781250842466
| 1250842468
| 3.89
| 9,271
| Apr 11, 2023
| Apr 11, 2023
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liked it
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This novella shows writing skill, but left me lukewarm throughout. It’s a slice-of-life story about fantasy falconry, and when I say “slice of life” I
This novella shows writing skill, but left me lukewarm throughout. It’s a slice-of-life story about fantasy falconry, and when I say “slice of life” I mean that most of the book does not involve the protagonist facing plot problems or having stakes, whether large or small—it’s simply an account of her work in the royal mews, training and hunting with an enormous roc. The prose is solid though not remarkable, and I enjoyed the quasi-Persian setting and the restrained inclusion of fantasy elements—only the existence of rocs and manticores is fantastical, and even those are treated as real animals rather than fantasy creatures. It was interesting to see a character bonded to a mythological creature that is written entirely as a real bird, and the falconry aspects certainly read as if the author researched them. The humans are believable too; I believe that the culture of a royal mews would be like this. I especially believe in Darius as someone who would work there. It was also fun and unexpected to see a fantasy reflection of the reality that someone who serves as the public face of a profession or cause generally isn’t the one doing the work, if only because they’re busy with the PR. That said, the narrator, Ester, has no discernible personality and is entirely forgettable. It’s one of those books that seems ill-served by use of the first person—perhaps a bit more distance from Ester would’ve scared up some individuality. I read the book over three days (already not a great sign for a 150-page novella!) and whenever I put it down, it was hard to convince myself to pick it up again. Had it been longer I wouldn’t have finished, because I just didn’t care about these characters nor have any questions about what might happen next. Only in the last 30-40 pages is there anything resembling a plot, and it does in fact end strong, with perhaps a bit of character growth after all. Still, the dire foreshadowing feels overblown, as if even the author realized the plot and characters as is are insufficient reason to turn the page—what happens isn’t that tragic, and my sense of the ending is that Ester realizes this too. (view spoiler)[I did like that about the ending: that she and Darius remain rukhers, it’s still their calling and they can start over, but they also seem to have come to some realization about the place of rocs in their lives. Birds can’t substitute for human friends or colleagues. (hide spoiler)] In the end, I’m left wondering if this should have been a novel: not because I wanted it to be longer, but because the technical foundations are solid and an author who loved this protagonist and milieu enough to write a full novel about them would certainly have developed a full plot, and likely a more memorable lead too. As is, it feels like this remained a novella because it’s a setting in search of a story. I would consider reading more from Lee, but I’m not in a hurry. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 28, 2023
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Oct 30, 2023
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Jul 17, 2023
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0553385763
| 9780553385762
| 0553385763
| 3.65
| 5,139
| Feb 24, 2009
| Feb 24, 2009
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Read through page 61 and setting aside because this is very much not working for me. It’s a very vibes-heavy, dreamlike book, to the point the entire
Read through page 61 and setting aside because this is very much not working for me. It’s a very vibes-heavy, dreamlike book, to the point the entire novel feels like an extended dream sequence, with startling events and imagery but nothing to make me care about the characters. I don’t know who these people are and have no interest in what will happen to them. Maybe someday I’ll be in the mood to try again.
...more
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Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 08, 2024
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not set
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Jul 03, 2023
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Paperback
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| 9789814901208
| 3.82
| 265
| 2020
| Aug 2020
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liked it
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My rating here is perhaps unreliable, because as this book is completely unavailable in hard copy in the U.S. (new, used, libraries—nothing!), I wound
My rating here is perhaps unreliable, because as this book is completely unavailable in hard copy in the U.S. (new, used, libraries—nothing!), I wound up listening to it on audio, which I hadn’t done before and have little desire to do again, though it was an interesting experience. It certainly drove home what a visual learner I am. I generally take complaints about foreign names in books as a bit of ethnocentric laziness, but the fact is I have a good visual memory and will never remember a foreign word I don’t know how to spell (fortunately for me, most of the characters appear in the Kindle preview, and the remaining few have common Muslim names. But a handful of places and objects get names later and I could not keep them straight). But then, too, listening to a book drove home just how different storytelling intended to be performed orally is from the written kind. I don’t think this was always to the book’s detriment (reading aloud probably heightened the action and suspense, at least for this jaded reader), but more often than not it was: oral storytelling comes with reminders and repetitions for good reason, and the conventions of written dialogue serve the audio format poorly. The author definitely over-explains the dialogue, but it wouldn’t have stood out had I been reading it. With those caveats, I had a mixed reaction to this book. It’s set in modern Brunei, though influenced by historical and mythical elements; technically it’s probably fantasy, but far more in conversation with the folklore of Brunei than with standard genre work. It follows a man named Lisan, of royal descent but orphaned young, in his quest to retrieve long-lost treasure from the bottom of the river: treasure mixed up with a powerful snake god and wicked royals of times past. And on the one hand, I’m not sure why this book hasn’t been picked up outside of Singapore, because it’s actually pretty good, in the sense that it seems entirely ready for the big leagues. It’s professionally written, it’s an interesting story, it successfully weaves together the mythological and the present-day. And it has a strong sense of place, bringing in sensory descriptions and history and folklore and the everyday. And the global market is not exactly saturated with stories about Brunei. This one will put the country on your mental map in a skillful and entertaining way. On the other hand—and I don’t know whether I can attribute this somewhat juvenile reaction to the audiobook thing—I hated all the characters. Lisan is insufferable: smug, entitled and entirely self-absorbed, and by the time he (view spoiler)[attempted to sacrifice his sister’s young children to the snake god (hide spoiler)] I was rooting for his death. His ex-wife and current love interest, Bathia, is only slightly more sympathetic, and an enabler from start to finish; the book acts like she’s tough, but she lets Lisan run her life from the moment he reappears after an 8-year abandonment, despite her intervening marriage to someone else. And there doesn’t seem to be anything to her life beyond her marriages, either. Everybody else is a bit-part character, insufficiently developed for any real investment. So, in the end, I think this is a competent book but not a stellar one, certainly worth trying if you’re looking for a book from Brunei, and probably worthy of a larger audience than it’s reached so far. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 15, 2023
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Dec 14, 2023
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May 07, 2023
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Paperback
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| 0809572842
| 9780809572847
| 0809572842
| 3.64
| 2,481
| Jul 04, 2008
| Aug 25, 2008
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really liked it
|
3.5 stars An unusual and ambitious novel—one that to my mind falls a little short, but I respect the ambition and can see why for some readers it’s a f 3.5 stars An unusual and ambitious novel—one that to my mind falls a little short, but I respect the ambition and can see why for some readers it’s a favorite. The Alchemy of Stone is a steampunk fantasy, set in a city in turmoil and featuring an intelligent automaton, Mattie, who works as an alchemist. The plot is, I think, the weakest part: there’s a lot going on in the city, conflict between different factions in government, parliament eclipsing aristocratic rule, xenophobia directed at dark-skinned “easterners,” brutal exploitation of the common people by the technocracy, all of it culminating in a bloody revolution—all of which our protagonist observes from the sidelines, without having much stake in any of it. The substance of Mattie’s story is in her attempts to achieve independence and her relationships with five diverse humans, drawn with a sharp eye for the power dynamics involved. This is particularly true, and particularly uncomfortable, between Mattie and her maker, a man who seems to view her as a sort of backup girlfriend and refuses to give up control over Mattie’s life. Their dynamics are well-crafted and believably portrayed, and Mattie’s friendships with other characters are interestingly complex as well (the love interest, unsurprisingly, is the least inspired of the bunch, but fortunately that’s not as dominant an element of the book as the tagline would have you believe). So I think it’s fairly successful as a character-driven story, but it does mean Mattie’s plotline largely consists of to-ing and fro-ing amongst her various friends, with all the political chaos and upheaval happening in the backdrop. It’s a bit of a mess, and at times it felt the author was struggling to tack on personal stakes for Mattie without quite succeeding—the “Mattie must find a potion to save the gargoyles” subplot seems meant to be the linchpin of the story but felt a bit unnecessary and tangential to me. All that said, I basically liked the book. The characters are intriguing, particularly Mattie herself—it’s interesting to see the book work through her advantages and limitations as an automaton, how her life works and how she views herself. She’s also an endearing character, mild and kind on the surface but with some steel beneath. I appreciated that Sedia was willing to take both Mattie’s story and the larger political one to uncomfortable places, without needing to explicitly point out everything that is wrong. It’s an intriguing setting as well, bursting with life and history, only a small sliver of which we see; one can imagine many more novels set in this world. The writing is mostly quite good, though in a few places it gets a little clunky and once uses “mendicant” where it means “mendacious” (oops! Those are very different!). And it’s a thematically rich book, raising questions about the possibility of true social and political change, about relationships across difference and power imbalances, and using Mattie’s non-human nature to explore some very human experiences of isolation and control and what personal identity and independence even consist of. I’m not quite sure what to make of the ending, which I wasn’t expecting to be such a downer: (view spoiler)[Mattie dies! Or at least, probably. If the key had survived it would probably have been easily found. And not only that, everyone important in her life fails her: by betraying her, by dying, by not caring about her nearly as much as she cares about them. It’s a true tragedy, and I wasn’t expecting that. Maybe just because fantasy authors have such a habit of contriving happy endings that I assumed Sedia would do it too. (hide spoiler)] Overall, this one is certainly worth a try for the interested. If I never found it quite propulsive, I nevertheless enjoyed the read; and if some aspects didn’t fully succeed, I still give it points for ambition and imagination, for taking risks and doing something different rather than just regurgitating an oft-told tale. Oh, and one last pet peeve for which the author is not responsible: while that cover may suit the book tonally, it bears absolutely no resemblance to Mattie. She’s a robot with a very feminine design and clothing, not a naked human with an overlarge featureless visor. And she definitely has eyes. They’re kind of a big deal. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 30, 2023
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Aug 03, 2023
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May 01, 2023
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Paperback
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| 144245993X
| 9781442459939
| 144245993X
| 4.13
| 117,352
| Sep 1972
| Sep 11, 2012
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it was ok
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A 2-star reading experience for me, though perhaps more of a 3-star book, since I don’t think it is bad so much as that it failed to resonate with me
A 2-star reading experience for me, though perhaps more of a 3-star book, since I don’t think it is bad so much as that it failed to resonate with me at all. In fairness, I didn’t really expect it to, not having liked any of the early Earthsea books that much (Tombs of Atuan is the clear favorite but I also have some problems with it). This one I picked up in part to get to Tehanu and in part out of a general interest in reading more Le Guin. But I did try; I even attempted to increase resonance by reading it while personally traveling around an archipelago! Sadly, while having only this book on hand while waiting for delayed ferries ensured that I finished it, the similarity of setting did not make up for the fact that almost nothing in the book appeals to me. I don’t like quest stories, or all-male casts, and as an adult I rarely vibe with books aimed at younger readers. Also, I am indifferent to dragons and dislike True Kings. And this book, well, it’s a coming-of-age story of a True King, going on a quest with an older wizard to stop an evildoer (with cameo appearances by dragons). In an objective sense, I think it’s a fine version of that—though disappointing and rather dull to me, obviously it has resonated with large numbers of people. It’s well-written, if in a mythic style rather than a high-tension one. It’s a decent coming-of-age story, also in an older style; contrasted with current work, this book is notable for its uncritical celebration of heroism. The teen protagonist, Arren, meets the Archmage, Ged, immediately hero-worships him, and while Arren’s understanding of Ged naturally becomes more complex over the course of the story, he’s never knocked off the pedestal. Likewise there’s a lot of laudatory hearkening back to past heroes. There’s also a lot of discussion of philosophy in it, which clearly has done something for many readers. Personally, I have doubts. Ged holds forth on two main issues, the first of which is the importance of natural balance and not acting unless one must, particularly if one holds power. Certainly there is some wisdom to this—people should respect nature, and those with power should be very careful about its use—but Ged’s idea of “must” defaults to “only to maintain the status quo,” as I suspect this philosophy necessarily must; thus, for instance, he takes no action to oppose slavery because he doesn’t want to take on moral responsibility for slavers’ fates. Meanwhile, the evil in the world is all about people’s yearning for immortality, and how immortality is essentially wrong even if seeking to live is natural and healthy. To me this did not feel especially relevant, since immortality isn’t an option for us real humans anyway; in the afterward Le Guin indicates she also intended this as a critique of rampant consumerism, which I have to say I did not get from the text at all. While we’re talking philosophy, back to the True King thing. As mentioned, I dislike this trope, especially when, as here, the reasons the character is supposed to be ideal for kingship boil down to a) lineage and b) traits that are admirable in a regular person but have little to do with aptitude for governance, like physical courage and endurance. Le Guin has convinced me that Arren would make an A+ firefighter or battlefield medic; if you ever need rescuing after a natural disaster, Arren is your man. But I remain without information to pass any judgment on his merits as head of state. And there’s the added weirdness of romanticizing the creation of a centralized government for the archipelago at all, when it has none during the story. Why does Le Guin, or anyone, think this is better than the current, localized rule? The islands don’t seem to have a weakness for warring with each other; they’re already held together as a cultural zone by ties of trade, immigration, culture and language, all of which seems to function fine without political unification. The only time anyone in the book talks about wanting a king, it’s when evil is seeping over the land—and of course people do tend to long for strong authority in times of trouble, but having a king wouldn’t have prevented what happened. It might conceivably have hastened the response—one of the things central government is good for is bringing to bear resources from unaffected areas in response to disaster—or it might not: central government is also known for overlooking the periphery. Anyway, the book doesn’t actually delve into this change in political system at all, which is baffling to me from the author of The Dispossessed. In the end I suppose it’s an illustration of the 20th century maxim that science fiction lends itself to progressivism while fantasy is inherently conservative. The latter I think is no longer true, but 20th century fantasies were notorious for championing monarchism, maintaining the status quo, and returning to past glories, even when the authors’ personal politics were progressive. And apparently thinkers like Le Guin fell prey to it just as much as anyone else. Maybe that’s why I prefer her sci fi. Also, even her older sci fi sometimes has women in it. At any rate, that’s one off the list. I hope Tehanu will be worth it, and possibly should have just skipped to that one directly. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 30, 2024
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Aug 2024
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Mar 14, 2023
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Paperback
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| 1982121289
| 9781982121280
| 1982121289
| 3.69
| 23,842
| Apr 04, 2019
| Feb 04, 2020
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really liked it
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3.5 stars A distinctive, hard-to-rate book, sort of a historical fantasy mystery with a literary bent. Kidd has a unique, fun writing style that was a 3.5 stars A distinctive, hard-to-rate book, sort of a historical fantasy mystery with a literary bent. Kidd has a unique, fun writing style that was a lot of the draw for me: this doesn’t feel just like every other book. Relatedly, her setting—London in the 1860s, concentrated on the murky medical underworld—comes vividly to life, and she’s clearly done her research, with lots of (sometimes disgusting) sensory detail and fun little references to famous real-world figures. The characters are distinctive and real; the protagonist is a 30-something, pipe-smoking, Irish-born detective who does not feel like every other heroine, and the side characters likewise memorable. And it’s fun to read, and made me feel for the characters in ways that a lot of fiction does not. That said, it is at least nominally a mystery, and doesn’t entirely work as one; additionally, the mystery genre’s rampant fridging of women is on full display here. This isn’t your typical mystery, as we more or less know the answer from the start—there are a lot of great scenes involving the kidnapper, a charismatic, brutal, hard-luck woman masquerading as a nurse, and the victim, a not-quite-human 6-year-old with an affinity for water. They’re both brilliantly done: Mrs. Bibby is the most compelling villain I’ve encountered in a long time, a textured character with a sense of humor who, unlike most villain types, seems to have capacity for change. Meanwhile, with the child Christabel, Kidd expertly toes the line between incredible pathos (this is a child who has been confined and treated as curiosity and commodity her entire life) and showing Christabel’s genuine creepiness and inhumanity. But Bridie’s involvement in all this is somewhat poorly justified, as her nominal client, from whom Christabel was kidnapped, obstructs her investigation from the start—and the plot unfolds without any particular brilliance or sense of urgency from her. The climax felt fairly ridiculous to me, with villains agreeably spilling their plans and past crimes to Bridie for no particular reason but that the plot requires it—in the case of one confession I simply don’t believe it, and have my own theories about why the character would have claimed it to be true. (view spoiler)[Mrs. Bibby being Eliza’s assailant makes no sense: it was an incredibly risky, stupid thing to do; she’s unafraid of violence but is only seen using it in a coldly purposeful way, never from rage; and for that matter she’s given little reason to hate Eliza, especially compared to her excellent reasons to take a far more brutal revenge on Gideon—which she doesn’t. So I still think Gideon was the real assailant, and may or may not have enlisted Mrs. Bibby to help, and that she claimed responsibility either to mess with Bridie, or as part of her recent deal with Gideon. (hide spoiler)] That’s not to mention the comic-book-like frequency with which characters in the climax survive all manner of deadly injuries. I was also just expecting certain plot elements to come together more strongly than they did. (view spoiler)[I anticipated Bridie would turn Gideon and Mrs. Bibby against each other by revealing Gideon’s role in Della’s death, but apparently Mrs. Bibby knew that all along? Also, what to make of Mrs. Prudhoe’s affectionate baby-eating jokes, especially when paired with Mrs. Bibby’s stories of eaten babies? (hide spoiler)] Also, I hate the way mysteries as a genre run on an engine of female suffering, all of which is sidelined—because it’s never the detective-protagonist doing the suffering, it’s never fully processed, there’s no catharsis and no opportunity for the victims to recover. People (generally women) just suffer horribly and then they die, and it’s apparently supposed to be balanced out by lighthearted scenes involving the protagonist. I’m not sure why readers who object so strongly to fridging for male character development will let it pass without a murmur for any other purpose. At any rate, there are four prominently fridged women in this book—not counting a few background murders not explored in detail—and especially given how dark and awful all these scenarios are, that was a lot for me. (view spoiler)[Margaret: kidnapped with her baby and then, to avoid a rescue, buried alive with her baby. Ellen: has her baby kidnapped with the connivance of her relatives, spends 5 years trying—apparently without success—to get her back or see her again, then when she gets close, murdered. Eliza: implied to be a victim of sexual assault/exploitation by both her employer and his psychopathic son, then brutally beaten such that she sustains a permanent brain injury, loses her personality, memory and all enjoyment of life, then dies. Della: sent to a terrible reformatory as a child, escapes only to be sexually abused by her employer, forced into prostitution, gets cancer, operated on without anesthesia by an unlicensed medical dropout who pressures her into it, then burned to death to hide the evidence after the operation fails. (hide spoiler)] There’s a lot of suffering from the women who survive, too, but that is more tolerable to me. The book does do a good job of exploring the limited choices for women at the time as well as the way people made lives for themselves anyway, and the major characters’ endings are quite satisfying. At any rate, I’m rounding up to 4 stars because where this book is good it’s brilliant, and I think it mostly succeeds at what it’s trying to do. Definitely worth a look if you are interested in literary/historical fantasy mysteries with a focus on the dark and grotesque. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 15, 2023
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May 24, 2023
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Mar 08, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 0380818612
| 9780380818617
| 0380818612
| 4.18
| 25,829
| Sep 23, 2003
| Apr 26, 2005
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liked it
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A somewhat difficult book to rate, in that I see what makes it the cream of the crop for genre-exclusive readers, and I did enjoy my time with it. But
A somewhat difficult book to rate, in that I see what makes it the cream of the crop for genre-exclusive readers, and I did enjoy my time with it. But especially at a time when I’m moving toward reading more literary fiction and less fantasy (this book was an experiment in whether I would be less frustrated with a slightly older work than with new releases, with mixed results), its limitations are very apparent. This is an epic fantasy novel though more or less self-contained, focusing on a queen mother, Ista, who feels stifled in her life and, in the course of trying to start anew, winds up entangled with gods, demons and enemy forces. Others have called it a character-driven novel, but I respectfully disagree. Ista is a proactive character, and the first 75 pages or so focus on her struggle to take control of her life, but once the adventure really starts, the remaining 400 pages are driven by larger forces and enemy action. So, a plot-driven novel, though leisurely-paced by the standards of plot-driven novels. The secondary characters are here to fill roles and are not particularly complex or interesting, and there are lots of long scenes in which characters try to puzzle out what’s going on and what to do about it. That said, I think it works: it’s an engaging plot, somewhat predictable but with enjoyable twists. The danger feels dangerous and the solutions generally earned, despite heavy involvement of gods leading to rather literal deus ex machina. But there are some rousing scenes, no glaring plot holes, sufficient depth to the worldbuilding for reader immersion, and an interesting religious backdrop. Combined with a competent writing style and engaging protagonist, I can see why people love it. This is my third Bujold book, and they all seem to start out strong, with a lot of pathos to get us invested in the protagonist, but then turn plot-focused and never deepen my investment, and wind up at 3-3.5 stars in the end. I had high hopes for Ista, who’s a change from most fantasy heroines—she’s 40, she’s had a life, she has some emotional intelligence—and whose initial situation is especially compelling: due to a history of real or perceived mental illness, her family considers her incompetent and in need of a stifling degree of protection. And so she’s trying to break away from that and establish her own agency, but has to be careful about it or risk being perceived as unhinged and losing her autonomy again. However, all this functions mostly just as Ista’s inciting incident, and while it is cathartic to see her leave all that behind and quickly come into her own, it also feels a bit wasteful to take that character and just have her solve typical fantasy problems. It probably doesn’t help that I read the first book over a decade ago, and this one doesn’t stand quite as independently as it claims—I didn’t remember Ista at all and some key character establishment, in terms of the nature of her malady and conditions of her adult life, seems to have been left to that book. Meanwhile, while I appreciated the departure from the tropes and expectations of current fantasy, this one reminded me how very “genre” epic fantasy tends to be. The overly telegraphed thoughts and feelings of non-POV characters, including physical reactions and whispered conversations perceived from implausible distances; the very rational, slow-motion portrayal of violence in which even someone unaccustomed to it fully understands what’s going on and can take intelligent action in the moment; the suicidal heroism of most of the cast. I don’t want to oversell this, because in many ways it does better than a lot of genre work: it doesn’t play around with head injuries; it offers understanding to characters who annoy or get in the way of the protagonist, who are generally seen as redeemable; the villain’s motivations make sense and are even sympathetic, although their methods are terrible; the one character with a sense of self-preservation is not treated with contempt. Overall I think it will come across as very mature if you read a lot of fantasy, a little over-the-top if you don’t. It does show its age a bit—Ista’s daughter the queen is planning a war of conquest against some other countries, which the narrative fully supports (I think I am missing some context from book one, but the context is presumably “they’re evil countries!” and that’s still a hell of a thing for a progressive American author to have published in 2003). Readers are constantly reminded that the fat guy is fat. And there’s a definite blind spot around class and privilege, although on the other hand I have read more recent fantasies that attempt to tackle this from the perspective of the aristocracy and the results have been uniformly nauseating, so perhaps it’s best to just accept the blind spot. I do think that for most readers this novel will come across just fine today. Overall, not one I loved but an enjoyable enough experience. I think I liked it better than its predecessor, so 3.5 stars. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 19, 2023
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Jun 26, 2023
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Jan 12, 2023
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Paperback
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| 0063054892
| 9780063054899
| 3.79
| 9,404
| Feb 07, 2023
| Feb 07, 2023
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it was ok
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A disappointing read. This has some fun elements but many others that are shallow, and the plot just needs some work, as the book struggles to keep th
A disappointing read. This has some fun elements but many others that are shallow, and the plot just needs some work, as the book struggles to keep the tension up and relies heavily on “because otherwise it would break the plot” contrivances. VenCo is an urban fantasy novel about a witchy road trip. Lucky is a 20-something Canadian working unfulfilling temp jobs and supporting her grandmother Stella, now in the early stages of dementia. When Lucky learns that she’s actually a witch, she and Stella go on a journey to find the final witch for a coven to which Lucky has been invited. This book has a really slow start, which isn’t a criticism I often make; I don’t care how mundane the stakes are as long as they exist. Unfortunately, here they don’t quite. We spend 60 pages meandering through Lucky’s ordinary life and seeing flashbacks of her dead mom before she ever meets a witch—while Lucky has worries (her apartment building is going to be converted soon, affordable housing is hard to come by), she doesn’t do anything about them and so they don’t rise to the level of plot problems. We’re 100 pages in before Lucky learns that she’s met a witch. And we’re 200 pages in before the quest starts, because the second hundred pages are spent on the witches just hanging out and sharing their backstories, without any particular reason to be concerned for them. The second half of the book is a little better as there are clear goals to pursue, but the villain is built up as highly dangerous only to come across as tame and easily foiled in his scenes with Lucky. Supposedly if this coven comes together it will somehow solve all the world’s problems—as in our world’s problems, climate change and so on—but how they are supposed to go from scrying and dream-walking (the only powers they seem to have) to saving the world is never addressed. Nor are many other basic questions: why is this particular coven so important, when there are others out there? Why would you make membership in this all-important coven dependent on finding long-lost souvenir spoons? Why is there a deadline on the coven getting together? So many arbitrary, nonsensical plot points ultimately make for an unsatisfying story. As for the characters, I basically liked Lucky and Stella, and their grandma/grandkid dynamic was probably the best part of the book. There’s not much depth or complexity though—except perhaps in the villain, who is hilariously over-the-top and seduces everyone he meets—and the book introduces a dozen other witches only to give them nothing to do but lots of scenes in which they wring their hands over the progress of Lucky’s quest, while simultaneously failing to warn her about known dangers because they don’t believe in preparedness. Or because the author is terrified that any application of common sense would ruin the plot, I don’t know. I do think this book will have more appeal to those who love girl power books, which aren’t quite the same as feminist books. While the women here have some power, thematically the book is quite shallow. It goes full-blown war-of-the-sexes, which as it turns out is still a war of the sexes when you include trans people, as all men with magic are apparently evil witch hunters while all the women are “yaaas queen!” Dimaline tries to drag historical witch hunts into this, and just comes across as uninformed—the coven’s base is Salem, where a third of the executed “witches” were men and the accusers girls (which the book definitely does not acknowledge as it would ruin the whole simplistic “history is all about men keeping women down!” line). She also claims that European witch hunts targeted women for being awesome (“smart, or queer, or loud”), rather than, say, old, poor, or mentally ill, which is much closer to the truth, but of course less glamorous and less likely to inspire smug superiority to the benighted past in its readership. In the end though, I think this book cares more about glamor—for all its brief waving of the anti-capitalist flag, there’s a lot of materialism, a lot of drooling over antique this and bespoke that and attention to the quality of products. A lot of wanting its women to be powerful, without actually doing much, or to make change without making sacrifices; see the vague claim that women taking leadership roles in corporations is in itself “undermining the foundations of colonialism” (skeptics might prefer “selling out”). If you’re looking for nuance or deep thought this is not the book for you. And it could have worked anyway—it has the makings of a fun, light urban fantasy read. I enjoyed the sheer modernity of it, the up-to-the-moment dialogue and product placement and the sprinkling of humor. With better editing, to tighten up the plot and raise the stakes and make them organic rather than contrived, it might have been great fun. But as is, I can’t recommend. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 11, 2023
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Mar 22, 2023
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Jan 10, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 0553805487
| 9780553805482
| 0553805487
| 4.07
| 103,127
| Aug 28, 2007
| Aug 28, 2007
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liked it
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I seem to have developed a tradition of reading a feel-good witchy book every Christmas, a tradition of questionable value given my relatively low rat
I seem to have developed a tradition of reading a feel-good witchy book every Christmas, a tradition of questionable value given my relatively low ratings of the actual books. That said, despite its summertime setting this felt like the perfect Christmas book, being a cute small-town story of two adult sisters bonding for the first time, plus an endearing little kid and some background magic. As with many fantasy books these days, my emotional investment was strongest in the first third and receded as the book progressed. But I did enjoy the relationship between sisters Claire and Sydney: they are very different people and both drawn with full sympathy; their emotional hangups felt believable to me; and their growing into sisterhood is truly sweet. I also enjoyed Sydney’s 5-year-old daughter, Bay—young kids in fiction don’t always work for me, but this one did—the sisters’ elderly cousin, Evanelle; and the sentient apple tree. It’s a warm and fuzzy family story populated by quirky characters, i.e., just what I was looking for. What I wasn’t looking for was the romance, which the book was aggressively selling and which I never bought; I just never cared about the love interests or the ensuing relationships. Maybe it is the cultural shift even from 2007 to 2023, but Claire’s love interest, Tyler, comes across as a little too pushy today—and the idea that a 34-year-old virgin who’s seemingly never even been on a date (or even had a friend her own age!) would be comfortable moving at the pace of an experienced guy who knows what he wants was not credible to me. Meanwhile I was not sold on Sydney jumping into a new relationship within a couple months of escaping from a 6-year abusive one with Bay’s father. And the abusive ex problem is wrapped up so hastily and clumsily I had the sense the author only included it out of obligation. I also wasn’t sold on the book throwing in even more romantic subplots with a couple of townspeople: Fred’s relationship woes add nothing to the book, and neither do Emma’s once (view spoiler)[her husband finally gets around to reassuring her that he got over Sydney a long time ago (hide spoiler)]. Emma could’ve been a much more interesting character, had the book let her deal more with the consequences of being raised with the idea that sex was her primary value (I also wondered about the frequent identification of her family line as “Clark women” when they’re all getting married and changing their names). But I wanted more exploration of her friendship with Sydney and less marriage drama that went nowhere. At any rate, I can see how this would be a great book for the right reader, and seeing that this was Allen’s first novel, her later work is likely more polished. But it never quite rewarded my initial investment. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 24, 2023
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Dec 26, 2023
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Jan 09, 2023
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Hardcover
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Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship
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| 4.20
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Sep 26, 2024
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Jun 07, 2024
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| 3.91
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Apr 21, 2024
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Mar 06, 2024
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| 3.68
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liked it
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Mar 28, 2024
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Feb 05, 2024
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| 4.04
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really liked it
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Jun 07, 2024
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Feb 04, 2024
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| 3.80
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liked it
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Jun 22, 2024
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Jan 10, 2024
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| 4.18
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it was ok
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Jul 26, 2024
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Jan 04, 2024
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| 4.35
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Nov 24, 2023
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Oct 14, 2023
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| 4.01
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not set
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Sep 30, 2023
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| 3.69
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it was amazing
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May 18, 2024
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Sep 13, 2023
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| 3.90
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did not like it
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May 26, 2024
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Aug 29, 2023
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| 4.57
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liked it
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Oct 14, 2023
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Jul 18, 2023
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| 3.89
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liked it
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Oct 30, 2023
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Jul 17, 2023
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| 3.65
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not set
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Jul 03, 2023
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| 3.82
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liked it
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Dec 14, 2023
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May 07, 2023
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| 3.64
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really liked it
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Aug 03, 2023
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May 01, 2023
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| 4.13
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it was ok
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Aug 2024
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Mar 14, 2023
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| 3.69
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really liked it
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May 24, 2023
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Mar 08, 2023
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| 4.18
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liked it
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Jun 26, 2023
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Jan 12, 2023
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| 3.79
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it was ok
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Mar 22, 2023
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Jan 10, 2023
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| 4.07
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liked it
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Dec 26, 2023
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Jan 09, 2023
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