I just think that sapphic fantasy is the best genre right now and you can't change my mind
“Because you surprise me. Because I’m not done being
I just think that sapphic fantasy is the best genre right now and you can't change my mind
“Because you surprise me. Because I’m not done being surprised by you.”
Iron Heart is the sequel and conclusion to Crier’s War, an opener of a duology that changed me deeply. With Ayla on the run and Scyre Kinok gaining increasing power, Crier is left needing to decide where her loyalties lie.
Ayla’s journey in this sequel is primarily about power: her new desire to gain, and her newfound agency in making decisions about which types of power to wield. She's a character who has been through a lot, and always survived, which makes her compelling. But she is also a character who is terrified to let her guard down. Falling in love with Crier challenges her and forces her to push herself. Seeing her take up a new role in politics of the land was immensely satisfying, and I was consistently invested.
Throughout this series I have been increasingly invested in Crier as a character, and her arc here is especially relevant. Crier yearns to be human; so much so, in fact, that she pretends to be one. In book one, this dynamic built to her falling in love, believing all along this made her flawed. In this sequel, Varela addresses a deeper question: How is she truly different from any other human? Her defiance of her father, her falling for Ayla, and her meeting human friends all serve as key parts of her character arc.
“You can’t read me once and know everything.” “Then I will read you again and again.”
The dynamic between Crier and Ayla is, as always, incredibly tender. While their dynamic in book one caught me, I definitely stayed hooked; I found several lines of dialogue between them genuinely heartbreaking (this one above took my breath away).
Generally, though, this did not quite live up to book one for me. I noticed a distinct amount of tell not show around the beginning. There’s also a specific issue with point of view that bugged me a lot: sometimes, point of view stays stable in each chapter, and sometimes it switches. I did not remember this happening in book one, so I do not know if this was not intentional, and I did not like it. And this series has always relied a bit on plot happening to the characters, but I felt that repeated a lot here.
“Because you deserve to be known, in whatever capacity you wish. I am trying to become a person who deserves to know you. I want that more than anything.”
In a lot of ways, I think it was my enjoyment of book one that led to my enjoyment of this book, rather than anything specific about this sequel. Yet a few other dynamics of this book stood out to me. Junn is an excellent side character, and her development stood out as a highlight here. She serves as an excellent narrative foil to both Crier and Ayla and is by far the most fleshed-out character within the book. While I wanted more from (view spoiler)[Storme, Ayla's brother, (hide spoiler)] I definitely enjoyed his dynamic with Ayla.
This duology was an excellent read and I am so excited for more by Nina Varela. If you haven't picked up Crier's War yet... well. You really should.
When I read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in May, it stuck with me almost immediately. This did not. It has been like four months and I do not remWhen I read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in May, it stuck with me almost immediately. This did not. It has been like four months and I do not remember a single plot point and I frankly do not want to.
Study in Scarlet is not a bad book. Let’s just get that out there. It’s an interesting book, actually, towards the beginning—the first few scenes are exciting, and do an excellent job at setting up the characters of Holmes and Watson. It’s easy to see why these stories were such an overnight success.
I don’t know where exactly it begins to fall apart. I just know that it does.
Listen… Is this not just a short story that has been made novella length for no reason? Truly. Is it not that? There is no purpose to this being so long—frankly, the plot structure began suffering to me. And I honestly just didn’t sign up to be lectured about Mormonism for so many pages for a mystery that would’ve made a perfectly fine short story.
Is this a low-level take? Almost certainly. Is it honest? Absolutely.
After an excellent book one focused around two girls falling in love and the politics of revolution, I was really exciteUm… so this was disappointing.
After an excellent book one focused around two girls falling in love and the politics of revolution, I was really excited for book two, focused around book one love interest Carmen as she tries to find her way between ruthless rebel and lover. But. The execution? Was not amazing.
This was not the worst book I have read. This book is an excellent warning to remember the human aspect of any type of revolution; to remember that, when fighting for freedom, human life still matters. People still bleed. Carmen is forced to choose between herself and her cause, which serves for an interesting arc. The scene in which Carmen is forced to cross a border is particularly excellent, rivaling the best of book one. I genuinely liked Carmen and found her decently compelling as a lead.
On paper, this book is good. But in practice… I feel like I wasted my time.
The problem is that We Set the Dark on Fire bases its appeal off the tension between Carmen and Dani. In this book, they do not reunite until 50% of the way through the book, and it is frankly boring. Which shocks me to type, by the way. In book one, the tension between Carmen and Dani was genuinely never boring to me.
It makes more sense, however, when I remember just how repetitive this book was. We get it, Ari is evil. We get it, Carmen feels guilty over her betrayal. We get it, she has feelings for Dani, but maybe there’s angst about it. We get it, she’s not sure whether Alex trusts her. Mejia also tends to rely on tell, not show, for her characters, and here, with no actual interaction between Dani and Carmen, the telling gnawed at me. I don’t want to be told that Carmen misses Dani for 200 pages, regardless of how invested I am in how much she misses Dani. Show me.
Maybe as a result of this, I actually found myself struggling to invest in Carmen here. Her character is on the precipice of a decision, and is desperate to get Dani back, and cares for Alex and Sota too. There is no reason she should not drive the plot with ease. But… it feels like the plot happens to her. And yes, this was true of book one at times, but there was a reason for that; Dani and Carmen’s situation was helpless, trapped. Carmen is doing things in this book. There is no reason for her to be boring, and it is frankly a crime that she is.
Oh. And the plot twist is really painfully obvious, and not satisfying enough to make up for it. You could guess the twist in book one, too, but you cared so much that it didn’t matter. This… why on earth do we care about the characters involved?
All in all, while book one felt dynamic, this feels, frankly, stagnant. I honestly think this just needed another round of editing. It really wasn’t awful. It was just. Deeply mediocre. I’m going to pretend this doesn’t exist and reread the Dani/Carmen scenes from We Set the Dark on Fire now.
2 1/2 stars. I see what the author was trying to do with this book: the 80s-Stranger-Things vibe, the concept of vigilante justice, the storyline abou2 1/2 stars. I see what the author was trying to do with this book: the 80s-Stranger-Things vibe, the concept of vigilante justice, the storyline about abuse. I only wish these aspects translated.
This book follows Mayhem, a high school junior who has recently escaped an abusive situation with her mother, Roxy. The two are forced to go to Roxy’s hometown, where they meet her sister, Elle, and her adopted cousins, Jason, Kidd, and Neve. But the hometown has its secrets, including... magic.
To compliment a few things here: Mayhem’s storyline around abuse is a good concept. I appreciated Mayhem’s determination to “become someone who hits”. That was cool! It’s solid and interesting character motivation, if done right.
Two problems here: one, that motivation doesn’t actually explicitly appear until halfway through the book, which is a problem, as it makes the first half feel meandering. And two, her arc never connects to the plot, though it’s clearly intended to. The character beats and the plot beats feel as if they’re meant for two separate books, and Mayhem’s internal monologue is barely there.
On a pure story level, and I think partially as a result of lacking character motivation, the story structure is really really off—the book feels like 70% buildup, a plot conclusion, and then an awkward 20% that has to conclude character beats.
More importantly, the book just never really gives you a reason to care about these characters. Possibly I am just bad with first person POV (we’ve established that), but I just... I feel like this story could’ve taken place with entirely different characters, and nothing would’ve changed. The book doesn’t develop relationships enough for their stress points to actually change anything. When Mayhem tells us that Neve is her best friend, it rings false; when she tells us she loves Jason, I felt nothing.
The storyline with Roxy is similarly frustrating. Roxy is an alcoholic who has made her daughter into her pseudo-parent. That is acknowledged in the book... at about 50%, and I felt the buildup to the moment where Mayhem calls her on it really failed. The book establishes that Mayhem is being treated badly, but not that she knows she’s being treated badly, so her argument with her mother feels oddly out of left field. It also... Roxy is really fucking up a lot here, and I kept expecting the story to really challenge her into changing, and it doesn’t, she just kind of... decides to change.
It’s not bad, per se, it’s just vaguely unsatisfying. The book in summary.
Oh, I also wished this book leaned into the setting and the vibe a bit more. What’s there is good and I wanted more.
I was waffling between giving this two and three stars, because I do see the potential here. I don’t think this is a bad book: it’s well-written, and I liked some of the ideas and concepts. But frankly, I was just... not invested in this book as a whole. I hope others will click with this one more than I did.
This book feels good on paper: an emotional premise, eerie writing, representation, and an excellent ending that ties into thematic ideas. I only wantThis book feels good on paper: an emotional premise, eerie writing, representation, and an excellent ending that ties into thematic ideas. I only wanted more ensemble cast, and maybe a bit less of whatever was going on with the romance.
We Were Restless Things follows the mysterious death of Link Miller by drowning… in the middle of the woods. In various ways, they all hurt from this: Noemi as she grieves for the boy she had feelings for, Amberlyn as she grieves her brother, Gaetan as he grieves his best friend, Lyle her friend, and new kid Jonah as he tries to find a place in their group.
The indisputable best part of this book is the amazing imagery. This book was eerie and the more fantastical chapters are wonderfully written. They remind me of the best of Maggie Stiefvater.
Noemi is asexual. This arc was by far my favorite in the book; she processes her sexuality in both healthy and unhealthy ways, depending on the time. The way her feelings about herself and more specifically, how people would perceive her, impacted her relationships hit me hard. When this came up between her and Jonah, it originally struck me as a romantic arc, but it’s really not; the focus remains on her development. I wanted a bit more out of her ending, if anything.
Some very solid positives over here. Unfortunately, this was not a perfect reading experience for me.
First of all, it’s a book that in structure does not pick up until around 50%. Until then, these characters are essentially just getting to know each other. This isn’t technically a problem. On its own.
But besides Noemi, none of these characters feel as if they have a significant or resonant character arc. Who are these characters? I don’t feel as if I quite know. But We Were Restless Things left me craving… more from its ensemble cast.
As we’re talking about the characters, I want to bring up romance. The dynamic between side characters Amberlyn and Lyle (yes, this is sapphic content) is solid and sweet. The other romantic dynamics… were another area. Noemi is, over the course of this book, technically lusted after by three different guys, one dead. Both of her romantic arcs are… frustrating.
Jonah and Noemi are a well-written couple, except when the premise of their relationship is so fundamentally unromantic. Yes, I understand that two stepsiblings who know each other from childhood are very different from two people who meet for the first time at seventeen. I get that. But as someone who has a stepbrother, one, this entire trope is just nasty, and two, this book uncomfortably leans into that element of siblinghood. (view spoiler)[At one point, essentially, Noemi feels guilty about not wanting to sleep with Jonah, and when he traces the words I love you into her hand, she replies “stepbrother”. This… felt so incredibly uncomfortable.
Just. I don’t know. If you’re going to do a romance between step siblings, which I would generally encourage against it has been done so many times you are not doing something new, there is no need to point it out like this. (hide spoiler)]
On a more positive note, it’s interesting that this book that was comped to The Raven Cycle also contains two main characters whose relationship is not based on kissing, though for very different reasons. It’s one of those accidents that would still make a wonderful essay about parallels.
To be completely fair to this book in criticizing it, I think I partially have shifted in what genres I prefer over the past couple of years. Had I read this at seventeen, high off my Raven Cycle phase, I’m fairly sure I would have enjoyed my experience far more. So if that’s you… this might very well be worth a try. It’s well-written, and though I wanted more from four of the five leads, they’re all likable.
This had some good parts. I just do not think I was the target audience.
I woke to find her lying next to me, quite dead, with her throat torn out. The pillow was shiny and sodden with blood, like low-lying pasture
I woke to find her lying next to me, quite dead, with her throat torn out. The pillow was shiny and sodden with blood, like low-lying pasture after a week of heavy rain. The taste in my mouth was familiar, revolting, and unmistakable. I spat into my cupped hand: bright red. Oh, for crying out loud, I thought. Here we go again.
In Prosper’s Demon, a man lives his life exorcising demons. The demons, naturally, have not taken well to this.
I've read one novella by this author before, and both have left me feeling as if my brain had just gone through a blender. They each feature snarky characters. More importantly, though, they focus on excellent twists.
My only criticism would be a few passages that felt a little bit male gazey. But otherwise, this novella was excellent, and I’m excited to read more.
I bought this at a library sale essentially on the principle of 'well, I should read it'. Expectations of actually enjoying it? Hm… low. Reality? I’m I bought this at a library sale essentially on the principle of 'well, I should read it'. Expectations of actually enjoying it? Hm… low. Reality? I’m obsessed.
The appeal in these stories comes in their brief nature. They’re easy to read before bedtime, each night, if you want to be incredibly cheesy (I did). Each one sets up and interesting premise, and builds to an ending that you hardly ever see coming, but always find satisfying.
In his epic video Sherlock Is Garbage and Here’s Why (a masterpiece), hbomberguy pointed out that Irene Adler is, in this story, a protofeminist figure, and I’m inclined to agree. Having a woman outsmart Sherlock in one of the first stories, upon which he learns and grows, was both unexpected and deeply satisfying. It’s fun in general that Holmes, occasionally, fails.
There is very little I can say about Sherlock Holmes that has not been said before. I do think, however, that the dynamic of John and Watson is particularly brilliant. As is pointed out in the introduction to the Complete Sherlock Holmes (which I just started as of the writing of this review), the idea of having an everyman to Sherlock Holmes’ incredible detective is honestly inspired.
My favorite stories included: A Scandal in Bohemia → featuring Irene Adler The Speckled Band → I guessed the ending of this, but it did not impact how much I loved it. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches → arguably the eeriest one, and featuring some interesting commentary on gender
Tom Stoppard does it again. What 'it' is, is a different question.
Within this play, love and intellectualism work in opposition. It is in essence a plTom Stoppard does it again. What 'it' is, is a different question.
Within this play, love and intellectualism work in opposition. It is in essence a play about how we may know everything there is to know but we cannot only know this: we must also know what it is to love. We can predict the future, Stoppard believes; except, of course, for irregularities, like sex. The play focuses a lot on sex in this regard, to the point where questionable choices are made. (Pairing a 17-year-old with her 25-year-old-tutor who has known her since she was 13 is simply... not a choice I would have made.) I also didn't fully believe the 'love' between either of the couples: I believed they were attracted to each other, but not that they loved each other. The final waltz is a wonderful scene, but some of the buildup felt like not enough.
Discovery of work after a time... that, I had more emotions about. When Thomasina questions why Septimus tells her that their lost plays will be "discovered, or otherwise reproduced". (view spoiler)[Hannah discovers her work; by the time it is discovered, it has already been reproduced. (hide spoiler)]
I also love the costume blending and prop listing. This particularly would work well onstage.
I dramatically read this with my friends over Zoom and would love to give it a detailed reread at some point. Tom Stoppard has the oddest style and I can never decide if I like it. I did like this more than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. That, however, may be because I desperately miss the people I got to see. Lockdown is killing me a bit.
Sophocles is by all definitions one of the greatest playwrites of all time. He focuses on the psyContinuing the tradition of greek tragedy reviewing.
Sophocles is by all definitions one of the greatest playwrites of all time. He focuses on the psyche, and often on characters who fall by doing the right thing: who define themselves by honorable traits until it kills them. These plays may be less known on the whole, but still pack a punch.
I did notice that these plays had little affect on me in comparison to certain others by Sophocles, but I believe this may partially be a result of translation; these translations feel less biting, less sharp, more direct meaning than emotion.
Reviewed Plays from this Collection →Ajax ★★★☆☆ Sophocles← (c.445 BCE) (from a diff. volume) Ajax is a man with a name that shrieks: the Greeks would have called him Aias. The vocative, when speaking to him, would've sounded like aiai, the Greek exclamation. In this play, following Ajax's final day after a prophesy comes he will kill himself, he certainly lives up to that. After this one day, the time for his fate to come will expire, and he may live. Ajax dies upon a Trojan sword, on Trojan ground, but he has placed it himself.
Tecmessa, Ajax's wife and war-bride, plays a much wider role in this than expected: she garners respect, in contrast to the expectations for war brides. Yet she still has a fragile role. The consequences for her if Ajax dies are not just losing him, but losing everything. His son, Eurysaces, would be considered illegitimate; indeed, this is the fate of his half-brother, Teucer. The contrast between him and Teucer is also interesting: while Teucer is an archer, associated with cowards (Paris) and tricksters (Odysseus), Ajax is a straight-shooting fighter. But the 'deception' speech to Tecmessa complicates this, using arrow imagery around his upcoming death.
The breaks in convention are notable: the play breaks typical narrative structure, the location shifts, the chorus leaves and comes back, and Ajax dies on stage, rather than off.
Notable Lines (John Moore translation): CHORUS: Strangely the long & countless drift of time brings all things forth from darkness into light. (646) AJAX: My speech is womanish for this woman's sake. (652)
→Women of Trachis ★★★★★ Sophocles← (unk) The saddest of these plays... to me, anyway. Following Deianira, wife of Heracles, as she is tricked by the dead into killing her husband, this play pulls its audience in. Deianira is hopeless, but never pathetic—she uses what agency she has to great renown.
This play made me feel genuinely claustrophobic. We, as the audience, know from the beginning that Deianira is killing her husband through her actions: as she battles with whether to stand still or act, we know she should stand still. But it is impossible to fully want that for her. It is her willingness to act that makes her so compelling; it gives her the chance to fix her life, and eventually destroys her life.
→Philoctetes ★★★☆☆ Sophocles← (409 BCE) This play revolves around the consequences of an evil trick played by the Greeks (as per usual). Ten years ago, the Greek army abandoned war hero Philoctetes on an abandoned island. Now, as per a prophecy, trickster Odysseus and young Neoptolemus must retrieve him. The character of Neoptolemus here must grapple with the bones he's standing on, but also keep the peace with both parties.
This play is interesting in that, like Ajax, it's a story about war that occurs removed from war. This is a recurring theme of Greek tragedy: the battles are not actually the topic of drama. It is the psychological trauma of war and the dynamics of heroism that are up for debate.
PYLADES: I’ll take care of you. ORESTES: It’s rotten work. PYLADES: Not to me. Not if it’s you.
Making the Anne Carson Oresteia an edition o
PYLADES: I’ll take care of you. ORESTES: It’s rotten work. PYLADES: Not to me. Not if it’s you.
Making the Anne Carson Oresteia an edition of the same book as the Aeschylus Oresteia is a mistake. This is not the Aeschylus Oresteia: it is a mashup of three chapters of the Oresteia by the three extant Greek tragic authors. There is Agamemnon, by Aeschylus, on Clytemnestra's killing of Agamemnon; Electra, by Sophocles, one of three takes on Electra and Orestes' killing of Clytemnestra; and Orestes, by Euripides, a tale meant to take place before the Eumenides of Aeschylus: not a conclusion, but the buildup to one (and which I somewhat prefer to that tale).
This composed story has a different effect and a different moral to give than any individual play. In the composition, we receive different takes on the same characters. These three plays are all focused on a character study in a way the second two of the Aeschylus Oresteia are perhaps not: Clytemnestra gets her due, Electra gets her chance to speak, and finally Orestes gets his chance at fighting for redemption. Characters shift: the Orestes of Electra is sharp, turned in one direction, while the Orestes of his play is sick with grief.
It is also a story that shifts: the Agamemnon's turn from joy to violence, the Electra's deep sorrow, and the Orestes' shift again to redemption. This play begins with a house stained by blood: the legacies of death within the house of Atreus hang deep over the play, whether any is willing to acknowledge them or not. As Tyndareas asks Orestes: where should it end? Where does justice end, and redemption begin?
The idea of assembling an Oresteia based on plays by the three great tragedians, in chronological order, is brilliant, and a translation project I fully loved. But the selections must also be reviewed. Or, I’m going to review them, anyway. Quotes are at the bottom of the review.
Play by Play Reviews
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→Agamemnon ★★★★★ Aeschylus← “Every character in the Agamemnon sets fire to language in a different way,” as Anne Carson once so wisely said in her introduction to this play. And indeed they do. The play begins with a messenger speech that blends past and present, and then quickly switches to action. The translation of Cassandra’s lines as lowercase and out of poetic meter; one section allows Cassandra to shout repeatedly, before coming back to articulate lines.
A motif runs through the play of violence against women as the taking away of voice. Notably, the chorus explicitly references the rape and cutting of the tongue of Philomela, who was turned into a nightingale, a creature with voice. The play is, in a way, about the silencing of women: Iphigenia, who had a ‘bit’ forced into her mouth, and Cassandra, deprived of belief by a god. Clytemnestra, by killing Agamemnon, takes these back.
The brilliance of this play is that it may be read with sympathy to so many. Agamemnon is often brash, hard to grasp, yet sometimes sympathetic: what is my duty, he asks, towards daughter or country? (Although this is also hypocritical, as I just tweeted ‘I'm on the side of everyone in the Oresteia except for Agamemnon’ last week. And I stand by it.)
Clytemnestra is by no means a morally good character, but it is hard not to sympathize with her, hard not to root for her. She is a power player of the highest magnitude; the scene of stychomythia with regards to the red cloak feels deeply visceral, despite the fact that the consequences are simply the trampling of a symbol. Subtext takes the highest power here: she drags him into hubris, walking the path of a god, dooming him in the eyes of the gods as well as in hers. Clytemnestra, in her two murders, believes she ends the cycle Agamemnon started; she is the only one left alone to tell the story. Is Clytemnestra in the right? Perhaps not. May we blame her? Not that, either.
Cassandra is the most aware character of the play: in fact, aware of not just her fate, but Orestes & Electra’s as well. Her language is scattered, wild, compared to the others; but with that, she is no fool.
When Cassandra enters the court, Clytemnestra tells her the court is kinder than a rich one (Carson has cut this). But what life is there, truly, in living as a slave to the murderer of those you love? Cassandra’s death is, in its own way, a mercy killing. Well. Depending on your translation.
A note on translation: Carson’s translation simplifies much of Agamemnon, cutting the chorus’ monologues, specifically, down a significant amount. While I am no fan of the elaborate nature of certain choral monologues, reading the Carson translation second, I almost felt it lacked some of the viciousness I got from the first play. I think the slow build lends nuance to Clytemnestra’s plan, more time for our minds to percolate around it. Clytemnestra has bite, yes, but not patience. In Ruden’s translation, her words are less sharp, but her machinations more powerful. From the Sarah Ruden translation, my first, I came away most sympathetic to Clytemnestra. With Anne Carson, my second, I came away far more sympathetic to Kassandra. Take that as you will.
Agamemnon is my favorite of all Aeschylus’ plays and one of my favorite tragedies period. This is not my favorite of the translations.
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→Electra ★★★★★ Sophocles← Aeschylus’ Oresteia was already a classic by the time of Sophocles and Euripides, so they each picked things to focus on. In the Electra of Sophocles, she is decidedly more defiant, decidedly more confrontational, a creature of voice as Anne Carson describes her.
Sophocles, always obsessed with the psychology of his heroes, deproblematizes the murder, making Electra and Orestes easier to sympathize with. The killing is brutal, harsh, but less sympathetic to Clytemnestra, in comparison to Libation Bearers. Orestes is specifically brutal to Aegisthus, leaving out Clytemnestra’s body ot haunt him. Yet he also gives Electra a more active role: indeed, it is she who confronts Clytemnestra face-to-face, not Orestes. While Orestes does the doing, Electra does the speaking.
Electra, too, is developed in motivation here. We are introduced to her not in laying libations, but in fighting with her sister. Like Antigone, she loves the dead above the living; she is past childbearing, and without a husband, and resents that. She feels that her childlessness is a sign of a frozen life. She also feels she cannot unfreeze. “By dread things I am compelled… I know what I am” (295); “I must not violate Electra” (495), she tells the chorus. Joy would violate her. Why would it not? She has saved her brother and her sister and is thus hated by her mother.
The most important dynamics of the show, however, are between Electra and her siblings. Chrysothemis, Electra’s sister, enters the play, working to contrast the headstrong Electra. Their relationship works in the same way Ismene and Antigone’s does. Chrysothemis does not love her mother, but does not sacrifice for her justice. Her relationship with Orestes hit me even harder. As Electra begins the play, she believes that Orestes is dead: this relationship is stronger, more necessary. The recognition scene, by the way, made me tear up.
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→Orestes ★★★★★ Euripides← In her intro to this play, Anne Carson calls Euripides a “clown, but a dark clown”. On Twitter, I said he did the Ancient Greek equivalent of smoking crack. I stand by all of these statements. Euripides is at once obsessed with death, with punishment, and with brutality, but also willing to offer redemption at the wildest of times. This is a play defined by chaos: by ups and downs that seem almost random at first. We discuss Helen; we beg Menelaus for help; we see other opinions on incoming deaths; we see Menelaus will help; we see that he will not offer help after all. The final decision to murder Helen and either force Menelaus to acquiesce or go out in a blaze of glory is random, brought up with no buildup. It is a purposeful kind of chaos to offset the real madness of the play.
For indeed, this is a play defined by human madness: directly in front of a home, Orestes goes mad while Electra and Pylades are forced to watch, forced to pick their sides and their battles. Here, the Eumenides are not real spirits who come onstage, but spirits of the mind, Orestes’ guilt found manifest in spirits. This is the human: the relationships between them, and the madness that is hard to cure. Watching Electra attempt to care for her little brother once more is the most emotional part of the play.
This is the only play of any of the extant Orestes-focused works in which the relationship between Orestes and Pylades is at all relevant to our canon. One of the notes in the margin of my notebook when we read the Aeschylus Oresteia was, and I cannot stress this enough, the phrase “oh to be a paradigm of friendship with my same gender best friend in Ancient Greece.”
Anne Carson calls this ending clownlike, almost a ridiculous sense of the deus ex machina. But I almost feel this works. In the house of Atreus, “death begets death” : as opposed to Antigone’s family, where they consume each other. It takes an act of a god to fix it.
Quotes from the Book
→Agamemnon ★★★★★ Aeschylus← Notable Lines (Anne Carson translation): AGAMEMNON: You’re like a bulldog. It’s not very feminine. (634) CLYTEMNESTRA: There is the sea and who shall drain it dry? (650) CHORUS: No one taught me this song and it has no music, all the same it shakes me. (678) CHORUS: Why do you mix up Apollo with “woe?” This god does not ever near sorrow go. (739-740) CASSANDRA: I with my thermonous thermonous means hot soul, burning mind, brain on fire (780-782) CHORUS: Out comes death. (Outcomes? I’m not sure where this will end.) CLYTEMNESTRA: And this man has the libation he deserves. He filled this house like a mixing bowl to the brim with evils, Now he has drunk it down. (1048-1050) CLYTEMNESTRA: And why get angry at Helen? As if she alone made this wound in us. (1105)
Notable Lines (Sarah Ruden translation): CHORUS: (on Iphigenia) She was like a painting’s central figure. (241) CLYTEMNESTRA: I think the shouts don’t blend as they rise up. (321) CLYTEMNESTRA: That’s what they made me out to be: unhinged. I sacrificed, no matter. (593-594) CLYTEMNESTRA: Just as he left her, like a household dog. (607) CHORUS: (to Agamemnon) You hardly were acting a part that invited applause. (801) AGAMEMNON: A lion in its raw hunger bounded past the tower and licked up all the tyrant blood it wanted. (827-828) CLYTEMNESTRA: I’m not ashamed to tell you how attached to a man I am, by nature. (856-857) CLYTEMNESTRA: And if his deaths were tallied with the stories, he’d be a second Geryon, three-bodied; (869-870) CLYTEMNESTRA: And justice will lead him to the home he scarcely hoped for. (911) AGAMEMNON: Surely a woman shouldn’t long for battle. CLYTEMNESTRA: It’s gracious for the fortunate to lose. (940-941) (this is the same line as 634 in Carson’s translation) CLYTEMNESTRA: Zeus is crafting wine from bitter grapes. (970) CHORUS: Try on your new yoke. (1071) CASSANDRA: God of the highway—leading to my death— destroying me once more—destroying me merely in passing. (1081-1082) CASSANDRA: Soon now, I think, I’ll chant my second sight. (1161) CASSANDRA: Yes, I see clearly what their father tasted. (1222) CHORUS: Poor thing! Now sing your reckless mouth to sleep. (1247) CASSANDRA: I speak your language better than I’d like to. (1255) CLYTEMNESTRA: Though all I said before was right for then, I’m not ashamed to state the opposite. (1372) CHORUS: Where shall I turn, while the house falls? (1532)
→Electra ★★★★★ Sophocles← Notable Lines (Mary Lefkowitz translation): CHORUS: Why do you seek such unbearable suffering? (I didn’t note down a lot of lines here.)
Notable Lines (Anne Carson translation): ELECTRA: Friendship is a tension. It makes delicate demands. Let me go mad in my own way. (183) ELECTRA: That day tore out the nerves of my life. (271) CHRYSOTHEMIS: If I want to live a free woman, there are masters who must be obeyed. (461) ELECTRA: Call me baseminded, blackmouthing bitch! if you like— for if this is my nature we know how I come by it, don’t we? (814) CLYTEMNESTRA: No shame at all. ELECTRA: Ah now there you mistake me. Shame I do feel. And I know there is something all wrong about me— I am the shape you made me. Filth teaches filth. (828) CLYTEMNESTRA: There is something grotesque in having my own evils save my life. (1039) CHRYSOTHEMIS: There are times when justice is too big a risk. (1370)
→Orestes ★★★★★ Euripides← Notable Lines (Anne Carson translation): ELECTRA: His mother’s blood comes quaking howling brassing bawling blacking down his mad little veins. (29) ELECTRA: No marriage, no house, no children, just time. (159) ELECTRA: All the women of that family are trouble. (184) ORESTES: Grief is killing me. MENELAOS: She is a dread goddess. But curable. (297) ORESTES: I am unholy. A mother killer. At the same time pious and lawfuk. A father avenger. (422) TYNDAREUS: It was Electra set the house ablaze, not using fire. (471) PYLADES: I’ll take care of you. ORESTES: It’s rotten work. PYLADES: Not to me. Not if it’s you. (639) I know these are iconic but they are also very good. CHORUS: The life of mortals is a line no ruler can draw. (775) PYLADES: Hold on, hold on, I have to protest. Do you think I would choose to live without you? (831) SLAVE: Another quaint barbarian idiom is real bad shit happening. (1075) SLAVE: You won’t kill me? ORESTES: Go. SLAVE: Fabulous. ORESTES: Unless I reconsider. SLAVE: Not fabulous. (1159)
Poor thing! Now sing your reckless mouth to sleep.
Greek tragedy is a genre I did not expect to find so utterly enthralling before now. Yet
Poor thing! Now sing your reckless mouth to sleep.
Greek tragedy is a genre I did not expect to find so utterly enthralling before now. Yet the complexity, emotion, and gravitas presented within these plays has me enraptured. Here is a very long review.
[image] On the Use of Tragedy The Greek concept of tragedy is a fascinating one and one easy to misunderstand. I have actually been in a Greek Tragedy class now and read fifteen greek plays (a long review can be found here), so I feel more qualified to talk about this now. As given by Aristotle, the definition of a tragedy is not actually in its sad ending: it is in experiencing human suffering. (Most of the extant plays, not by coincidence but by generations of selection, end negatively.) Catharsis, by his definition, is a type of cleaning: "we experience, then expurgate these emotions". Tragedy can attempt to make the worst experiences consumable. It is not the ending, but the process.
Aristotle said a tragedy should focus on a great man and his fall—not a good or wicked man, but one in between. His wording was 'hamartia', interpreted as flaw. This may have been oversymplified. A separate theorist, Bernard Knox, said something I prefer: that a hero makes a decision rooted in personal nature, and follows it to personal destruction. (This is especially relevant to Sophoclean drama.) Heroes can be everything: admirable in their steadfast natures, flawed in pride and violence. The Greeks did not admire every hero; rather, they thought of heroes as a way to explore both the benefits & the drawbacks of certain traits.
At the heart of every Greek tragedy comes a moment of 'recognition' and 'reversal'. In the best, according to him, these are the same: this is catharsis.
In case you were curious, my favorite plays of the sixteen I've read would be, ranked: 5. Medea, Euripides 4. Libation Bearers, Aeschylus 3. Hippolytus, Euripides 2. Agamemnon, Aeschylus 1. Antigone, Sophocles These are all contained within this collection.
Reviews of Plays Notes: As this was my central textbook for a Greek Tragedy course, I’ve mentioned essentially three plays by the Big Three that I actually read via separate volumes.
[image] →Persians ★★★★☆ Aeschylus← (472 BCE) A play of a great amount of grief. Review to come, TBD.
→Agamemnon ★★★★★ Aeschylus← (458 BCE) Reviewed here. This is my favorite Aeschylus and one of my favorite Greek plays.
→Libation Bearers ★★★★★ Aeschylus← (458 BCE) The brilliance of this play is that no character goes to their grave unsympathetic. When we see Clytemnestra speak of the death of her daughter at the hands of her own father, of the relationship with her daughter she has tried to mend, we are entirely on her side. When we hear Electra speak of the murder of her father by a woman who has become a tyrant in her land, we are entirely on her side. When we see Orestes' love for his sister, his doubt at whether he should commit this ultimate crime, we are entirely on his side. The death of Clytemnestra is heartbreaking because we cannot decide whose side we are on; we mourn for her while sympathizing with her killer.
On a side note, Electra's allegiances are fascinating - she has sided with her father, the murderer of her sister, as have the women slaves (the so-called Libation Bearers) who make up the chorus. The women disagree rather than uniting, and their conflict, though partially given to Orestes, makes up the central conflict of the play. (This was a paper topic I had written down and did not write.)
Interestingly, Clissa, Electra's nurse, serves as more of a motherly figure than Clytemnestra. Without her, the plot could hardly function; it is she who tells Aegisthus to come to Orestes, who forms such a central piece. Just as in Oedipus, a barely-named character decides the solution to the tragedy, but here, it is even more significant; a mother kills a mother.
Notable Lines (Sarah Ruden translation): ORESTES: The male's female inside, or if he's not, he'll prove it soon. (305) ELECTRA: We are suppliants and refugees alive at your tomb; it must take us in. (337-338) ELECTRA: A raw-minded wolf is the soul our mother gave him. (421-422) CHORUS: The house must keep its wounds open. (472) ELECTRA: Persephone, give me triumph in its beauty. (490) CHORUS: Nobody honors what the gods revile. Which of these stories am I wrong to bring together? (638-639) CLYTEMNESTRA: We'll die the way we killed, by trickery. (889)
→Eumenides ★★★★☆ Aeschylus← (458 BCE) Eumenides means 'The Kindly Ones', and refers to the fates that prey upon Orestes for the entirety of this play, until he receives an Athena-run trial. Though the trial is for Orestes, murderer of his mother and breaker of laws of the earth, the one truly on trial here may be Apollo. This is a play of the old gods vs. the new; one that begins with horror, and ends with unexpected forgiveness.
Notable Lines (Sarah Ruden translation): CHORUS: There is a fitting place for terror: the overseer of the mind must sit there constantly. (517-519) CHORUS: The gods, who win every match, have wrenched me away from my vulnerable post. (838) ATHENA: Are the goddesses shrewd enough to find the path of merciful words for the people? (989)
→Prometheus Bound ★★★★☆ Aeschylus (?)← (unk) This is a play of dubious authorship due to its oddness: the language, the lack of choral ode, and the technical elements all seem to place it in a later century. Still, it is not without its merits. Zeus, depicted here as a tyrant, chains Prometheus to a rock until he gives up a prophecy. Indeed, Prometheus holds the secret of Zeus' downfall, if he can only keep it.
There is a strong contrast between Io, doomed into constant movement, and Prometheus, doomed to constant stillness. Prometheus stands on the edge of the world, on the vista of time; he talks only to Io and to the daughters of Oceanus, the oceans circling the world.
This is a strange little play of seeming stagnancy, but in reality, it is dynamic.
Notable Lines (James Romm translation): PROMETHEUS: All art is weaker than necessity. (514) IO: One wretch to another. (595) IO: I'm off the track, beyond what's sane. (884) PROMETHEUS: You young gods, new in rule—you think you dwell in towers that never topple. Have I not seen tyrants twice already hurled from them? (955) PROMETHEUS: Perhaps, but I choose punishment like mine over servitude like yours. (968) PROMETHEUS: Majesty of my mother Earth, bright sky that lets the common light whirl round, you see me here, and see my lot: injustice. (1092)
[image] →Antigone ★★★★★ Sophocles← (442 BCE) Reviewed here. I think this is still my favorite ever Greek Tragedy. Loved this translation; feel like I can say this now as it’s the fourth I’ve read.
→Oedipus the King ★★★★★ Sophocles← (c.430 BCE) Reviewed here.
→Oedipus at Colonus ★★★★☆ Sophocles← (406 BCE) Reviewed here. I did not do a detailed reread of this one as it was not on our syllabus.
[image] →Medea ★★★★★ Euripides← (431 BCE) Technically, this was my first-ever greek tragedy, in eighth grade. Reviewed here.
→Electra ★★★☆☆ Euripides← (420-410 BCE) Aeschylus' Oresteia was already a classic by the time of both Sophocles and Euripides, so each shifted their focuses. In Libation Bearers, Aeschylus had focused on motherhood; in Sophocles, focus had shifted further to Electra, making Clytemnestra more villainous than anything else. Euripides, a constant bringer of further darkness, leans the opposite direction. In his adaptation, Clytemnestra is sympathetic. In Aeschylus' adaptation, the audience has no problem sympathizing with Electra and Orestes, even with their sympathies sticking by Clytemnestra. In this adaptation, it is harder. Clytemnestra's visceral grief over Orestes, her clear love for even Electra, outweighs even her earlier crime. When Electra herself is vicious and hateful to Clytemnestra, and she joins in on the killing, our sympathy becomes more difficult to place. I actually honestly struggled to sympathize with her at times, which is not a problem I've had with either previous Electra.
The focus here is not on criminal fates, but on the status of outsider. The poor man who treats Electra well is the hero of this play, not royalty.
Interestingly, this play also contains a lot more misogyny? There is a huge negative focus on Clytemnestra and Aegisthus for failing to play into gender roles; Aegisthus is essentially called bad for being too feminine, allowing a woman to dominate him, and Clytemnestra for being the dominant. This is the most prominent theme of the play and I really didn't vibe with this; it's actually somewhat strange given how interesting I generally find Euripides' view of gender. I can't tell to what degree this is Electra's character and to what degree this is Euripides' view, and I'd be interested to know.
Notable Lines (Emily Wilson translation): ELECTRA: My hands, my tongue, my heavy-hearted mind. (335) ORESTES: He's now your slave, the man whom once you had to call your master. (898) ELECTRA: You thought your wealth and power made you someone. For me, I'd rather a man for husband—you looked like a girl. (939) CHORUS: You've spoken fairly, with an ugly fairness. (1051)
→Trojan WomenEuripides← (415 BCE) *TBR Review to come, TBD.
→Hippolytus ★★★★★ Euripides← (428 BCE) Reviewed here. This is one of my favorites.
→Helen ★★★★☆ Euripides← (412 BCE) This is an interesting play, written as an exoneration of Helen from the hated version of her in the Trojan war myths (though I always enjoy her). It’s an interesting play in terms of plot, and a bit protofeminist: Helen has more agency within the narrative than any other character, and very literally takes back her agency. A way-less-evil Medea. Though not quite as vicious and memorable.
Notable Lines (Emily Wilson translation): HELEN: Among barbarians, all are slaves but one. (285) CHORUS: What mortal can think it all through and explain what is god, what is not god, and what’s in between? (1140)
→The Bacchae ★★★☆☆ Euripides← (406 BCE) A tragicomedy of sorts, about disrespect for the gods and the fluid nature of gender. Very harsh and at times, almost cold: it feels torturous, voyeuristic of pain. Definitely interesting to analyze on the topic of Euripides in general.
I did not write down any lines from this.
[image]
Not In This Collection →Ajax ★★★☆☆ Sophocles← (c.445 BCE) (from a diff. volume) Reviewed here.
One morning, women all over the world begin developing a power: electricity, running through their fingers. The ensuing cataclysm, framed by documentaOne morning, women all over the world begin developing a power: electricity, running through their fingers. The ensuing cataclysm, framed by documentation from the future, comes from four characters. There’s Roxy, 15-year-old white British daughter of a gangster; Tunde, a Nigerian journalist and the only man who narrates; Margot, an American mayor who develops the power despite her age; and Allie, a mixed-race abuse survivor who is stronger than normal in her power. As nations are conquered by women, things fall further and further apart.
This book primarily works as a subtle reverse of gendered power dynamics. Tunde’s first scene, and some further, are really strong. Tunde’s role in the book, specifically, feels like a specific reversal of the roles we're used to seeing women and men play in literature. His experience in the introduction to the book is an excellent metaphor for subtler forms of sexual violence and turns your expectations for the situation on their head very quickly.
This at first was really interesting to me. Over time, I realized it was all this book had to offer. Around 85%, I was seriously considering giving this book one star.
The characters here generally left me colder. Tunde was the only narrator in this book I actually consistently liked, though Roxy grew on me a lot by the end. What bugged me about the characterization in general, though, was how much the characterization seemed to serve as a vehicle for the plot. Margot’s motivations and personality fall off the track on about her second chapter and never return. Roxy is a solid narrator, but I never felt like I understood her. Tunde’s only stated motivation remains his newfound ambition to know, and we don’t get any sense of where that comes from, making it difficult to invest in. Allie’s motivations, criminally, remain fairly murky, indeed coming about primarily as a voice in her head. (view spoiler)[We don’t see her challenge this voice, at all, even in the barest sense, until her last chapter; the audience, meanwhile, knows the voice is badly intentioned very quickly. A lot of buildup would’ve been needed to justify her never questioning the voice, and the book does not give that. (hide spoiler)]
As the characters are clearly not meant to be the focus here, the main interest should come in the storylines. Unfortunately that was not working for me, either. Past the halfway point, I struggled to stay invested in the narrative. Some of this may also be the writing’s at-times overdramatic quality; however, I really don’t think that’s the main concern here. Something about the storytelling here feels far more focused on the brutality of the moment, the violence inflicted, then on the human element behind it.
This specifically began to bother me in terms of sexual violence. There are at least four graphic rape or attempted rape scenes in this novel (excluding the many instances of sexual harassment or threatened assault). The first one made me wince, but reminded me of the flipping of the targets of sexual violence; I especially appreciated the fact that the perpetrator invoked ‘he was asking for it’ as justification. The second one made me wince a bit more. The third struck me as genuinely gratuitous. By the fourth, which is also simultaneously a murder scene, I was really really struggling to not put the book away.
We’ve all read novels by men who immediately jump to graphic sexual violence when they have no idea what to use as plot. I would like to think, on a meta level, that the author is commenting on this tendency. However, my feelings on the actual plot device—profoundly negative—do not change when the victims are men.
The author also seems to have not taken into account essentially any of the nuances of gender discrimination based on culture, or based on intersections with race, sexuality, or gender identity. The fact that the societies we see break down are almost entirely non-European, while America and Britain both stay intact, began needling at me a lot as the brutality increased. I would enjoy seeing the takes of Middle Eastern or African reviewers on this. It’s also interesting that the author seems to not have taken into account variations on gender identity beyond ‘cis man’ and ‘cis woman’ (one intersex character appears, but no mention of trans people) in a novel about gender as a construct.
The thing that worked for me the most about this book was actually, weirdly enough, the framing device. The idea that this book is actually a male author’s book about a far-back time in history, framed by his deferential letters with a female colleague, spoke volumes. (view spoiler)[The line “This can’t have happened to women in the time before the cataclysm” is genuinely brilliant, and the line about “the canon of men’s fiction” really really really struck me. (hide spoiler)] It may not have been enough to make this book a favorite, but it certainly left me with less of a bitter taste in my mouth. I only wish the rest of the book had worked so well.
When Caitlin from my local bookstore recommended Code Name Verity to me (in the category of ‘historical fiction + kinda gay), she told me that 1) I woWhen Caitlin from my local bookstore recommended Code Name Verity to me (in the category of ‘historical fiction + kinda gay), she told me that 1) I would be obsessed, and 2) I would want to reread this book as soon as I finished it. She was right about both.
I read this book in the range from 1:00am to 4:00am, first of all. I don’t even remember the last time I needed to finish a book so bad. I needed to find out what happened!! How was it all going to go down? I had guesses, sure, but I didn’t know! I needed to see them escape.
That is because there is so much excellent foreshadowing in this book.
LONG SPOILER RANT ABOUT SAID FORESHADOWING: (view spoiler)[thinking about the fear foreshadowing and the fact that Maddie’s person was actually the mercy killer all along like HELLO??? hello??? very very proud of myself for figuring out the underlines at Lima, page 100, that was kinda hot. kinda wasnt expecting Anna Engel to be sympathetic even though I did have the genuine thought to myself that she was going to need to be for the underlining plan to work. the RADIO HOST like oh I think I registered that conversation as a lil weird but I totally did not register WHY and I loved that. dropping Verity in the conversation? i NOTICED that but i didn’t really get it… so much to think about. I fucking knew that Maddie wasn’t dead. I’m about to sound like a nerd so bear with me but it’s because of the placement of her death reveal—were she actually dead that would’ve been a huge reveal to drop at a key moment, in an interrogation, but we more see Julie’s grief, and it’s not A Moment™️ in the same way. I guessed that the codes were fake but the how SLAPS. I liked that I couldn’t at first tell who was who. For a while I was expecting Maddie to actually be the lead because I noticed the preoccupation with names and pseudonyms, but that ends up just being paid off with Julie’s identity as a torturer. and a liar in general. the fact that Julie is telling a fictionalized account the whole time… incredible. (hide spoiler)]
Anyway. It is not just the setup and payoff that I loved about this book. I had so many feelings about this character. I love that Queenie’s narrative voice is so distinct; that she’s so lighthearted at times, and it takes longer to see her further sides. She's a really dynamic character. Maddie is also really interesting, and I loved getting invested in her. More importantly, the relationship between the two of them is really wonderful and hit me hard. Physically I’m here but emotionally I’m typing a long essay about how much they love each other.
LONG ESSAY HERE: “finding your best friend is a bit like falling in love” really got dropped as an actual line in this book. sure! yeah absolutely! or maybe you just like girls (as Julie apparently does! canonically!) o for it to be the 1950s and i have a best friend who makes me feel like im falling in love. (view spoiler)[THINKING ABOUT KISS ME HARDY. thinking a LOT about kiss me hardy. also thinking about Julie just writing the name 'Maddie' because she can't even process anything else, and then Maddie doing the same later....... sigh. on a side note Maddie ending up with Jamie is genuinely Hilarious. she says that Jamie reminds her of Julie Multiple Times. this is not Brideshead Revisited. (hide spoiler)]
The final note: I was so so upset by the ending of this book I kept expecting a miracle to have happened. I loved it. It made me cry. It will probably make you cry too. I don't know. Read it and let me know.
This book absolutely changed me as a person. The Likeness follows Cassie Maddox, an Irish detective. She's assigned to solve the murder of a woman usiThis book absolutely changed me as a person. The Likeness follows Cassie Maddox, an Irish detective. She's assigned to solve the murder of a woman using her old undercover identity… and goes undercover as the woman herself.
It’s been such a long time since I read a detective novel that had me so thoroughly engaged from the beginning and so invested. This book was claustrophobic, and got inside my skin —it made me feel as though I were as trapped as Cassie.
Tana French is an expert at placing clues and making even red herrings feel like a part of the story—even the red herrings always, always always play a part in the eventual reveal. Indeed, these novels never succeed off one big twist, it’s more the details.
SPOILER: (view spoiler)[I was pretty sure I knew my suspect pool but little twists like the how and why...the Rafe and Justin thing... RAFE BEING THE ******... Abby being in love with Daniel... holy shit bro I’m screaming. also the ending is all very Murder on the Orient Express and that slaps. (hide spoiler)]
What works so well about The Likeness is that it gets you to invest in characters you must also suspect—gets you invested in the idea that the perpetrator was not a certain character, or group of characters. You sympathize with those you suspect. You sense the true stakes of this death having occurred.
SPOILER: (view spoiler)[What messed me up the most about this novel is how invested I, too, was in this little family. I longed to be a part of this sort of makeshift home. I wanted them to succeed so bad, and it is this that makes the reveal of the motive so strong; you almost understand, that shock and betrayal that they felt. When the reveal finally came as to who did the final murder, and then in the same line the baby, I was absolutely losing it on my audiobook. (hide spoiler)]
This ending is unsatisfying too, in its own ways, but it works because 1. you get the clear answers you want, and are only left with new questions rather than old ones 2. (view spoiler)[there isn’t a clear villain in the same way as in In the Woods, so the lack of justice is an open question rather than just upsetting (hide spoiler)] and 3. it offers such a strong sense of growth in Cassie, whom I love so much. It is so deeply satisfying to see Cassie learn to put trust in other people as the novel progresses.
It's been two years since I read this novel, and I can honestly say it's stuck with me like few I've read. I think this is one of my favorite suspense novels ever written.
4 1/2 stars and I keep waffling back between four and five, but please do know I'm absolutely obsessed.
LobizonaThis released today, August 4th 2020!
4 1/2 stars and I keep waffling back between four and five, but please do know I'm absolutely obsessed.
Lobizona follows Manu, an undocumented immigrant confined to her home both by ICE and by her starry eyes. When her life at home falls apart, she escapes to the magical world of Kerana, where she is still, regardless of appearances, wrong.
Manu lives at first with her mother and family friend Perla. In Garber’s Argentinian mythology, seventh sons become werewolves, lobizones, while seventh daughters become witches, brujas. Here, women are brujas, while men are lobizones. Manu, however, just as she has found a place where her eyes do not define her, discovers that as a hybrid, her existence is a crime: that even here, in the first place where she is not an immigrant, she is still considered illegal.
This book feels deeply vivid. From the harsh opening on, danger constantly feels real, present. Manu is at first hiding, and next a fish out of water, but at all times a fascinating narrator. When she escapes ICE to a new world, we root for her wellbeing, hoping for magical solutions. When it is revealed that even here, her entire existence is illegal to the powers that be, it is genuinely crushing.
Seeing her come into her own, though, is deeply satisfying. It helps that her relationships with other characters all hold different weights in the narrative: Saysa, Catalina, and Tiago have a wonderful squad dynamic with Manu, but still all feel like distinct characters. Saysa was my favorite. Catalina, though, is probably the one I find most interesting: in any other book, she could be a popular girl trope, but here she’s nuanced, developed, and fun to root for. She also has a full character arc, something missing for side characters in a lot of YA fantasy. The unfolding mystery of the fate of Manu’s father, Fierro, is excellent.
The dynamic between Manu, Perla, and her mother is also resonant. There's a particular scene where Manu almost goes home to Perla, and Perla tells her that she may make her own choices, just as her mother did. I appreciated that the narrative is both deeply sympathetic to Manu's mother and allows Manu to make her own choices. (And the scene made me tear up a bit.)
… she comes to represent everyone who's ever wrongfully been limited or boxed into labels that don't fit simply because it's more convenient for everyone else. I feel the story is about how if we let ideas, traditions, and laws matter more than actual people, we are creating a world that confines us—we are drawing a border between what is and what could be. Language and societal norms don't exist in a vacuum. They are not stagnant; they're things we engage with, create, and shape for ourselves.
It’s not a perfect novel; at times, the first half is fairly slow. Some metaphors didn't totally work. The romance felt a bit by-the-book at first: there's a romantic competition plot line that, though resolved in a creative way (I really liked it), definitely takes over the dynamic between Tiago and Manu. But this book went so hard, and I am so excited for more.
This is an excellent blend of magical realism and contemporary fantasy focusing on binaries and the space between them. I’m excited for more. This comes out on August 4th. I hope you'll love it as much as I did.
It’s a midnight lie... a kind of lie told for someone else’s sake, a lie that sits between goodness and wrong, just as midnight is the moment
It’s a midnight lie... a kind of lie told for someone else’s sake, a lie that sits between goodness and wrong, just as midnight is the moment between night and morning.
The Midnight Lie follows Nirrim, a lower-caste girl living in the home of her middle-caste adoptive mother, Raven. In her world, the Half-Kith, or lower-class, have to pay tithes for any crimes—tithes of body, meant to go to the upper-class High Kith. When she’s arrested for catching & returning a red bird, Nirrim meets Sid, a jailed thief, and gets dragged into a conflict that will involve the whole world.
The Midnight Lie takes place in Herrath, a land separate from the Winner’s trilogy worlds of Valoria and Herrani—a world that exists on no maps. There’s magic here, where there is none anywhere else. This world is intoxicating, terrifying, and beautiful. The plot, while slow, winds you tightly around its finger. But those aspects are not what makes this book so good: it survives off character.
Nirrim begins the book essentially stagnated: she knows what is expected of her, to fall for the right boy and kiss him the right way, and so she does it. She is, in these chapters, almost half-asleep. The most alive we see her is in a vivid nightmare about waking up next to the dead body of Helin, her best friend.
The dynamic between Nirrim and Raven, her adopted mother, is one of the most interesting in the book. Raven is emotionally and physically abusive. You, the audience, know, or suspect, from early on. But the way this arc evolves is genuinely excellent. It feels as if you see through Nirrim's perspective, are as torn by Raven's manipulation as she is.
Those of you who have interacted in lesbian/bi/sapphic circles will probably recognize the term compulsory heterosexuality. This is admittedly a pretty broad social phenomenon, but recent discussion has focused a lot on how it can cause lesbians to force themselves into relationships with men, sans attraction: women aren’t taught to consider their own desires above those of men. For Nirrim, this interplays perfectly into her identity as an abuse survivor. When has she ever been asked for her feelings? So with little conscious effort, she has forced herself into a relationship with a man she hardly cares for, not knowing relationships should make her feel something.
It is this that makes seeing her shift into a relationship with a woman so incredibly satisfying. Nirrim and Sid have… so much chemistry. The relationship that builds between them is slow, but easy to invest in. Basically, OH to meet a super butch tourist locked in jail and have her attempt to seduce me.
Though The Midnight Lie was at times as slow as I remember Winner’s Curse being, this story had me so invested. I’m really excited for the sequel.
“I thought you died, but right now, I’m not sure you did.”
This is my favorite book of all time. Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir about a quee
“I thought you died, but right now, I’m not sure you did.”
This is my favorite book of all time. Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir about a queer abusive relationship blends reality with media and its mirrors. It flurries between grandeur and media and the simple, the human, varies between detailed tales and hypothetical quandaries to tell the story of a relationship.
Everything is a metaphor and not. Homes are a metaphor, the freudian idea of a basement threatening everything. The dream house is not necessary for domestic abuse, but hell, it helps. A house is never apolitical. As this wonderful New Yorker article tells it, “In the Dream House is primarily about the quandary of constructing In the Dream House.” It’s a story about the telling of stories that are not told, a going-through of every possible medium with which you can articulate abuse.
There’s a specific chapter from this novel I think about a lot, Dream House as I Love Lucy, in which Machado allegorizes her relationship to I Love Lucy, a comedy wherein the protagonist can never learn. In simple detail, she explains the plot as a narrator never able to escape her narrative but always the butt of the joke. And then she ends the chapter: Isn’t this funny? This is funny. It’s so funny. It could be funny. One day it will be funny. Won’t it? And isn’t this truly what you become—the butt of the joke, everyone laughing, the details so obviously absurd, the ex so demonic in characterization, but the joke’s not funny, and it can’t be, and you can’t laugh. I’ve explained this chapter end to a shocking number of friends and it never fails to incite a little bit of shell shock. I promise, it is even more when you read it.
I had several favorite chapters of this book, listed here with key quotes:
→Dream House as Lesbian Pulp Novel The cover tells you what you need to know: depraved inversion, seduction, lascivious butches and big-breasted seductresses, love that dare not speak its name. There are censors to get past, so tragedy is a foregone conclusion. It was written to the dna of the dream house, maybe back when it was just a house, maybe even back when it was just Bloomington, Indiana, or before humans even existed there at all.
→Dream House as Lesson Learned It was a power struggle, which is weird because you had no power at all.
→Dream House as I Love Lucy Isn’t this funny? This is funny. It’s so funny. It could be funny. One day it will be funny. Won’t it?
→Dream House as Sniffs from the Ink of Women Years later, if I could say anything to her, I would say for fuck’s sake, stop making us look bad.
→Dream House as Comedy of Errors Also, you’re afraid you’re going to miss your flight, because your girlfriend spent her time this morning putting on her face, an expression you’ve always found sort of funny and vaguely sexist but that now just strikes you as horrifyingly ominous, because it suggests that she has one face and has to put on another. And you saw underneath it last night. And you wish she was a man, because then at least it could reinforce ideas people had about men.
→Dream House as Demonic Possession But isn’t the best part of a possession story that the inflicted can do and say horrific things, for which they will receive a carte blanche forgiveness the next day?
→Dream House as Ambiguity The abused needed to be a feminine figure: meek, straight, white, and the abuser a masculine one. The queer woman’s gender identity is tenuous and can be stripped away from her at any moment should it suit some straight party or another.
→Dream House as Five Lights The final word, lights, is practically oatmeal in his mouth. (This chapter was one of my favorites in the book.)
→Dream House as Choose Your Own Adventure You watch the darkness until the darkness leaves you, or you leave it. You dream about the future. It’s going to be alright. One day your wife will gently adjust your arm if it touches her face at night, soothingly straightening it while kissing you.
→Dream House as Hotel Room In Iowa City You only speak the language of giving yourself up.
→Dream House as The Queen and The Squid Not that I want to eat you; I just want you nestled in my stomach for all eternity.
→Dream House as A Death Wish You’ll wish she hit you. You have this fantasy, this fucked up fantasy, of opening up a photo on your phone where you look glazed, and disinterested, and half your face is covered in a pulsing star. You want something black and white more than you want anything in this world.
→Dream House as Public Relations Pen poised over paper, wondering if they would let the world know if they were unmade by someone with just as little power as they.
→Dream House as Cliche The stoning. This image has stayed with me for so long. What both has been and is a punishment for homosexuality, inflicted by the woman she loved. Stone. Stone butch, stonewall, queer history studded with stones like jewelry.
I adored this book, a lot. Quite a lot. I'm really hoping for more from this author, and know I will think about this book for a long, long time.
“No one should have to sit and suffer and pretend to be someone they’re not because it’s easier, or because no one wants to help them fix it.”
Come
“No one should have to sit and suffer and pretend to be someone they’re not because it’s easier, or because no one wants to help them fix it.”
Come Tumbling Down is the second of the Wayward Children sequels—the third and fifth book of this series are sequels, while the second and fourth are prequels—and this one again follows Jack and Jill. This book begins when Jack mysteriously appears back at the home and asks for the help of the wayward children to help her take back her land.
Jack has been my favorite character of this series basically since the beginning, and the development she got here was so wonderful. At this point, we've seen all of her backstory out of order; it's nice to see where she progresses from the point she was at at the end of the first book, when I first got invested in her. Every book, I feel like I learn more about her and become more invested in her, and I love seeing the continuation. Also, (view spoiler)[Alexis being unkilled (hide spoiler)] is really fun.
Usually, these novellas thrive of off themes, and this is no exception: here, we focus on bodily autonomy, redemption, identity, and when death is the right choice. I enjoyed seeing the culmination to the conflict between the siblings: Down Among the Sticks and Bones never felt like the end of this story, and seeing more is intensely interesting.
These worlds are so eerie, and yet so enticing. Though your rational brain tells you you don’t want to interact, you’re engrossed at the same time, caught up in the politics and the expanse of this world. Between the vampire castle, and the sea kingdom, and the mad scientist dwelling, you see the danger… but you see the desire, too. You see where each character fits in their world, and long for that sense of belonging, too.
As I've read through more of these books, I find that I keep getting more invested in the arc of this home and the characters. There are so many side characters in this novella series now that have appeared in several of the novels, as pov characters or not, and it's just fun seeing how they all grow and change. They're all so distinct, and I'm rooting for all of them in different ways. If you read the first book of this and thought it was good but not great, I would highly recommend continuing on, because that's how I felt as well. This series as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Basically: friendship ended with Down Among the Sticks and Bones this is my favorite Wayward Children book now
Congratulations to the 2020 Hugo winner for best novella!
But when I think of you, I want to be alone together. I want to strive against and f
Congratulations to the 2020 Hugo winner for best novella!
But when I think of you, I want to be alone together. I want to strive against and for. I want to live in contact. I want to be a context for you, and you for me.
I love you, and I love you, and I want to find out what that means together.
This Is How You Lose the Time War is about two women, Red and Blue, on opposite sides of a time war, as they fall in love with each other via love letters. It… was a lot to process. This is more poetry than book, and I think maybe in another timeline, another time in my life, that would have annoyed me. In this case, I adored it.
This is a novel about time that does not try to ground itself or stick to a place and a setting. Gladstone and El-Mohtar stick to flurid details of this world: Red’s technology-centric future, and Blue’s natural paradise. The chaotic details surround the reader from the start: the rise and fall of multiple Atlantises, the sheer amount of the timestream, and—the biggest threat—the sheer unwinnability of the war. Rather, it sticks to a love story, to the simpleness of caring.
What does it actually mean to hunger as a crafted, manufactured creature? What does it mean to love as such? What does it mean when to desire is painful, and has consequences for both you and the other person?
The letters are the standout, the flying colors of the novel. There is something very profound about this Romeo-Juliet esque love story, one neither of them have a chance at surviving from the start. Communicating is an act of bravery and it is through these acts of bravery that they fall in love. I went trawling through Wikipedia and found out this about the letters:
..."Red's letters were written entirely by Gladstone, and Blue's by El-Mohtar; although they wrote a general outline beforehand, "the reactions of each character were developed with a genuine element of surprise on receiving each letter, and the scenes accompanying [the letters] were written using that emotional response"."
Don’t let all the doom fool you, though; this is by no means a sad book. The story of Red and Blue falling in love through time is one that I spent more time smiling at than crying at. I loved getting to know these characters. I hungered to know them more.
Disappearing Earth is a mystery around the kidnapping of two girls, but it’s primarily a book about connections: the ways in which one disappearance sDisappearing Earth is a mystery around the kidnapping of two girls, but it’s primarily a book about connections: the ways in which one disappearance stands for something different to each, and the way in which the knowledge of said disappearance can connect people in different cities, from entirely different backgrounds.
The Russian peninsula of Kamchatka is, above all else, isolated. The region was isolated by military law from 1945 to 1990, and is surrounded on most sides by water, featuring only a slim border with Russia. With a population of 322,000, both ethnic Russian and Koryak, this region is a hotbed of social tensions. Each chapter of this mystery is a self-contained short story that adds something to the whole.
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I felt as if, with all of these stories, I received such a strong view of different characters, such a clear picture of a whole intermingling environment. The story of Olya’s alienation from her schoolfriend over class conflict. The story of Kyusha, a student from Esso, as she navigates a relationship with her past and a relationship with her present. The chapter of Lada, as her old best friend, and maybe-lover, Masha comes back from St. Petersburg. Natasha, whose sister Lilia disappeared years past, as she associates with her conspiracy theorist brother and her sad mother. Revmira, as she reflects back on the tragic accident of her first husband.
It’s hard to explain exactly what I loved so much about this book. Maybe it was the intoxicating writing. Maybe the excellent character development. Maybe the growing feeling that no matter how this story ended, it would never be perfect for everyone.
And through each of these stories, the clues build bit by bit as to who did it. By the end, I was just figuring it out, but it's truly not about the solution: it is about the destination. The ending left me happy and sad, but with a kernel of hope that lingered for a long time.
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