Girlboss moment! This feminist queen just murdered your entire family!
Look, I'm not one to begrudge women their chance to experienStrikingly mediocre!
Girlboss moment! This feminist queen just murdered your entire family!
Look, I'm not one to begrudge women their chance to experience a power fantasy. So hey, if that is all you want from a book, you're in luck. Because that is all there is to Iron Widow.
But I take great psychic damage at the idea that there is anything feminist about this book. Zetian, the main character, hates every single woman in this book. Besides her dead sister, whose death is theoretically the inciting incident of the novel, even though we know exactly nothing about her. Zetian hates the patriarchy, she hates the way women are treated in her society, but she judges/criticises/feels superior to every. single. woman.
There are so many monologues on how sexism suckz. Look, I get that this is a YA book. But it's definitely meant for older teens (16+ I'd imagine, going by the detailed almost-sex scenes), who hopefully can handle more subtlety and nuance.
Zetian is not like other girls! No, she's the most powerful, the most special, the prettiest, the most seductive, the strongest, the most resilient girl ever. Everyone else has a qi power score of 84 (on average)? She's at 18,000! She's never really challenged. She's the only one who has an issue with misogygny, but it's never explained why she is a feminist (lol) when no one else seems to be. What influenced her views? Why is she different?
What does Zetian want? Well.... this is unclear. At first, she wants revenge for her sister. Later, revenge for all the girls who were killed as concubines. The plot is disjointed — I don't feel a real sense of Zetian's motivations. She's quite inconsistent morally.
The prose is laughable. It veers quite modern (alright, not marketed as historical fiction, fine) and very juvenile. Zetian actually says "Welcome to your nightmare" at the start of an action sequence. Come on! How are you supposed to take that seriously?
The romance was quite undeveloped. While the relationship between Yizhi and Zetian is built up, Zetian and Shimin & Yizhi and Shimin are quite instalove-y. Yizhi and Shimin don't seem to know each other very well. It feels like this was incorporated into the book in an effort to market it/for the very purpose of being different, without an effort to actually win us over. This was a shame, because it was one of the aspects I was most looking forward to. "Triangles are the strongest shape" should not be the foundation of a relationship.
I also thought there would be more discussion of gender (ie. the dichotomy of the yin/yang system with feminity/masculunity) due to the mixed-gender butterfly at the start of the novel, but I'll give the series the benefit of the doubt and presume that this will come up later.
My favourite part of the book was the last four chapters by far. I think the book should drop the feminist arc (first time I've said this in my entire life) and let Zetian be wholly a selfish anti-hero. That's where the book excels.
Everything in this book has been done better in a different book:
-Women are disposable in society, and Main Character is going to get revenge for this (of sorts): Girl, Serpent, Thorn -Female Power Fantasy (involving weaponising your sexuality + killing a lot of people): Throne of Glass -Integration of Chinese History in Fantasy (with a morally grey MC): The Poppy War -(view spoiler)[You're actually the bad guy in your fight against the aliens! (hide spoiler)]: Ender's Game -(view spoiler)[One of your love interests is kidnapped (hide spoiler)]: Hunger Games...more
I am endlessly picky and hateful. But The Dead Romantics warmed my cold heart enough that I don't have it within me to critique it, which is a first.
TI am endlessly picky and hateful. But The Dead Romantics warmed my cold heart enough that I don't have it within me to critique it, which is a first.
The Dead Romantics features Florence Day, a ghostwriter for a popular romance author who also happens to see ghosts (and whose family owns a funeral home). Her new editor refuses to give her an extension for the book she was supposed to have completed but Florence hasn't been able to write romance ever since her last breakup. To make matters worse, her father dies and Florence has to return home to the town that never accepted her to put him to rest. When she starts seeing the ghost of her editor, Florence has to rethink what she knows about love.
It's such a layered story as you might be able to tell by the lengthy synopsis above. Florence is grieving the death of her father. She's grappling with her past history with the town. She's at odds with her sister. She's falling in love. None of these aspects take second fiddle - the author places importance on every part of this book, not just the parts that lead to the romance.
The characters are wonderful. Florence is such a well-rounded character; in the hands of another author she might come off as quirky but (to steal from Alexis Hall's review) she really is unabashedly earnest. I like how we learnt more about her as the book went on. Florence's siblings, her mom, her friends all seem vivid and real. The Dead Romantics is also very diverse in a natural way, the character's identities are woven in to the story.
The romance itself was sweet and built up nicely. Benji is totally swoon worthy.
Obviously, death and funerals and grief play a large role here. It does make the book feel a little more contemporary than romance, which I didn't mind at all, but others might! It does still have a rom-com feel to it, especially with the pacing.
Even my biggest book pet peeve didn't bother me here. I hate excessive pop culture references and The Dead Romantics references a lot of romance books + romance authors. But Florence is a romance book writer; it would be weirder if she didn't reference reading other books....more
There's a book hidden inside The Atlas Six that has the potential to be good. But it's hidden really well since I just read 383 pages of very little cThere's a book hidden inside The Atlas Six that has the potential to be good. But it's hidden really well since I just read 383 pages of very little content.
Pros: - the characters are more nuanced than I thought they were - lots of interesting choices in regards to character dynamics - quite racially diverse - overall, much better and more interesting than i had assumed it was going to be - a dark academia-ish book that grapples with the elitism + exclusivity of the trope - it's very readable! the prose suits the theme of the books and it goes by fast - Parisa, my love <3
Cons: - nothing happens. so so little happens. i spent the book waiting for something to happen. a book should start as close to the inciting incident as possible, and i would've reccomended cutting out the first third of the novel entirely - nico is too nice and callum too annoying - the actual ~magic~ felt underdeveloped - some. weird dynamics in regards to sexuality (despite it being quite diverse on this front, the on-page sex/relationships are primarily male/female ones, with the queer relationships being hinted at. there was a threesome between two women and a man, but it was clearly centred around the man. normally, wouldn't have a huge issue with this but there are many many relationships here and it was a little reminiscent of If We Were Villains in that there's no convincing reason for why the implied queer relationships are depicted differently. if further books don't follow this pattern, i'll revert this critique)...more
Yes, this is the only acceptable conclusion for this series but yes, I am still upset about it
The Burning God has some ocrying, screaming, throwing up
Yes, this is the only acceptable conclusion for this series but yes, I am still upset about it
The Burning God has some of the best prose in the series, you can tell Kuang grew as an author. It has this slow spiral of a plot that makes CERTAIN EVENTS feel inevitable. Anyways, read this, love it and cry about it with the rest of us. If you get out of this series without trust issues, you are stronger than most of us.
You might be wondering: Shruthi, did you really read 1500+ pages of a dark fantasy novel in under a week when you should have been paying attention toYou might be wondering: Shruthi, did you really read 1500+ pages of a dark fantasy novel in under a week when you should have been paying attention to your classes. The answer to that is yes and also, it is not my fault that every prof spends 2+ hours explaining the syllabus.
Back to the book — this was better than The Poppy War. High praise indeed. It's heavily action focused, the prose is sharper and the politics + lore were delicious.
The heart of this book is all the wonderful side characters that we get to know more about. (view spoiler)[ Altan was no hero. I'm screaming. Nezha Nezha Nezha. Literally never trust a man again. Kitay is the only fucking exception. (hide spoiler)]
I think this was the most,,, uplifting book in the series but don't get me wrong: it's still incredibly dark and desolate. This is where the themes of imperialism truly are explored in detail for the first time and it is absurdly well done. (view spoiler)[ please pardon my annoying af hunger games reference but REMEMBER WHO THE REAL ENEMY IS (hide spoiler)].
Anyways, some other fun things in this book: opiod addictions, political allegories, more gods, more violence, barest hints of romance that Will sustain me for weeks, friendship <3, betrayal <|3...more
I am incapable of explaining how good this book is. Far better + more qualified reviewers have raved over The Poppy War.
So what's it about? Well, it'sI am incapable of explaining how good this book is. Far better + more qualified reviewers have raved over The Poppy War.
So what's it about? Well, it's mostly about Rin, a war orphan who's prepared to do whatever it takes to escape her fate, even if that means studying her ass off to join Sinegard, the exclusive military school. But really, it's about much more than that. It's about power and war, corruption and compassion, racism and imperialism that's all shockingly real despite the fantasy setting.
The Poppy War is brilliant. It intertwines Chinese history (in this book, mainly the second Sino-Japanese war and the Rape of Nanking) with a well-developed fantasy world. There isn't much info-dumping either. You slowly learn more about the world along with Rin, so it's never overwhelming.
There's a sharp tonal shift around the 60% mark around this book; this is when The Poppy War becomes, well, a book about war. But the first part of the book, focusing on Rin's journey joining the military school, or her time at the school is no less enjoyable. This part is hardly unique; there's a hundred other books about orphans who go to boarding school, but Rin's character sets it apart. How sharply ruthless and desperate she is fuels the book and keeps every part enjoyable.
The side characters don't disappoint either. Altan (view spoiler)[ haunts me just as he haunts Rin. Fr should NOT like him as much as I do but I found him terribly compelling. I'm also in love with him, but there's no accounting for taste (hide spoiler)], Kitay, Nezha are all incredibly interesting and only continue to get more interesting.
The writing is engaging, and it's quite fast paced despite being over 500 pages. The prose is perfectly suited to this style of book.
I recommend this book to everyone with a high tolerance for violence (as a reminder, the Rape of Nanking is a large influence). If you have any trigger warnings... might not be the book for you....more
My problems with this book: 1. Patroclus, the main character, had very little personality or ahow do you make the iliad boring
how is that even possible
My problems with this book: 1. Patroclus, the main character, had very little personality or autonomy. This is actually in contrast to every other version I've read/encountered which generally has him having an actual life.
2. Romance. I was a very big Patroclus/Achilles person coming into this book. But you really can't root for a romance if one of them is completely passive. They barely even talk to each other in this book. There are whole chapters where they don't have a single meaningful conversation and the whole book is about them.
3. The role of women. Look, I know it was a bad time to be a woman. But, this book makes the choice to make Achilles and Patroclus especially seem more virtuous than I think their actions allow especially in regards to how they treated the women in their lived. In The Iliad, Achilles is a dick. Once you accept that, then you can read the nuanced story. But this book takes the most charitable approach towards him at every turn and it cannot be solely blamed on Patroclus's narration. It's a disservice to the overlooked women in this book; Circe succeeds here where SoA fails.
4. The writing. 10 year old's should not have the same narration or dialogue as 20 year old's. There was no progression in the writing style to mark the passage of time. The pacing was so off.
The overarching plot was fine but the credit to that could hardly go to Miller. Such a letdown....more
After Nora attempts suicide, she finds herself in The Midnight Library, a place where she can examine her regrets and visit a life where she had made After Nora attempts suicide, she finds herself in The Midnight Library, a place where she can examine her regrets and visit a life where she had made different choices. It has Matt Haig's distinctive style with his tendency to inject life lessons in his work but it was done very well.
This is a very reflective book but it's not in any way subtle. It at time felt like a self help book but it was so thoughtful, that I enjoyed it despite that. I can imagine if you also do not like self help books then there's a good chance you will not like this book. It's definitely very light on the magical-realism so don't go into The Midnight Library looking for that.
Shadow and Bone mixed with A Court of Thorns and Roses.
Wildly predictable and so formulaic to the other new popular YA fantasy-romances. The sex sceneShadow and Bone mixed with A Court of Thorns and Roses.
Wildly predictable and so formulaic to the other new popular YA fantasy-romances. The sex scenes were infinitely less cringey than Sarah J Maas's though which was a plus.
(view spoiler)[ OKAY. YA FANTASY ROMANCE HAS A PROBLEM. When your beau turns out to be your enemy (even if it turns out he isn't the "real" enemy or he's actually the good guy etc.), YOU. SHOULD. FEEL. BETRAYED. Why does Poppy have sex with him after? Why does she change her mind so quickly? Super unrealistic and also lowkey problematic especially since sex by deception is considered rape sometimes and at the very least fraud and is just generally super unethical. (hide spoiler)]...more
Nannerl, Wolfgang Mozart's older sister stars in The Kingdom of Back. Historical fiction and fantasy twine to produce The Kingdom of Back that tells hNannerl, Wolfgang Mozart's older sister stars in The Kingdom of Back. Historical fiction and fantasy twine to produce The Kingdom of Back that tells her story (with some artistic liberties). I didn't love the fantasy aspect but oh wow, the historical fiction was amazing. The characters seem real, somehow Marie Lu made me interested in piano (an impressive feat) and it really brought to life the unfairness of Nannerl's legacy.
"What legacy could Nannerl have left if she’d been given the kind of attention and access that her brother enjoyed? What beautiful creations were lost to us forever because Nannerl was a woman? How many other countless talents have been silenced by history, whether for their gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic circumstances?" ...more
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