HIGHLIGHTS ~old-school manticores ~rocs are the real rockstars ~passionate people are just more interesting
You know when a book is a perfectly lovely reaHIGHLIGHTS ~old-school manticores ~rocs are the real rockstars ~passionate people are just more interesting
You know when a book is a perfectly lovely reading experience, there’s nothing to criticise, but you kind of instantly forget about it when it’s over? The Untethered Sky was like that for me – an objectively good book, but one that didn’t leave much of an impression. I don’t have any strong feelings about it. This review definitely isn’t going to be an angry rant, but it won’t be all passionate praise-poetry either.
This is a novella about a woman who hunts the manticores that plague her kingdom with the roc – a supernaturally large bird of prey – that she raised and trained from chick-hood. (Is that a thing? Chick-hood? It doesn’t sound like it’s a thing.) Although the deaths of her mother and brother at the hands of a manticore definitely helped nudge her towards her career, this really doesn’t feel or read like a revenge story. Rather than being obsessed with hunting manticores, I think it would be much more accurate to say that Ester is obsessed with Zahra, her roc.
And I actually thought that was a pretty interesting angle: Lee makes it very clear, through Ester, that rukhers are generally pretty odd people; obsessed with their rocs and the munitae of their rearing, training, and care; insular and isolated, serving society but not really a part of it; and mostly indifferent to the world outside of the Royal Mews. I love getting to hear from people who are very passionate about their Thing, whatever that might be, and I liked the approach of making rukhers out to be oddball obsessives rather than revered badasses. It felt more believable, and for me at least, it made the rukhers much more interesting.
To be fair, there was also a miscommunication here: where the blurb talks about Virtues and Archangels andI’m bored, I’m bored, I’m so freaking bored.
To be fair, there was also a miscommunication here: where the blurb talks about Virtues and Archangels and so on, I thought it was referring to literal Virtues and Archangels – not humans who use those terms as titles. I went in expecting – and excited for – a very different world than the one Roanhorse created here.
But even so, I found it so incredibly dull and eye-rolling. I grit my teeth over the name Celeste (which literally translates as ‘heavenly’) but her surname is Semyaza? As in, the leader of the Watchers??? A link which is never pointed our or explained? (I ran a search in the ebook to check.) And then just a few pages in, we get, I kid you not, a mention of a saloon girl named Lilitha?
Picture me shoving my face in a pillow and screaming. And not in a good way.
I’m not even going to get started on Abraxas, the sort-of love interest who was a General in the war against Heaven (how is he still on Earth when the rest of Lucifer & co are not??? Who knows!)
My point is, if you’re interested in Tread of Angels because you’re into angelic lore, this is not the book for you. You will catch all the oh-so-clever little references and they will make you wince or grind your teeth, because they’re not half as clever as they think they are.
Even without all of this, the story is incredibly dull. Maybe it would have worked better as a novel, so the plot could have moved a little more slowly and been a fair bit more complex? It reads as rushed, in novella-form. And while I liked Celeste in theory, I don’t understand how she got to be the way she is – good (and quick) with a knife but also very naive, which doesn’t really make sense given her background and living situation. Abraxas is an embarrassing cliche. The worldbuilding is disappointingly simplistic and not very interesting.
Excellently smexy, didn't skimp on the worldbuilding, I approve of all the religious!kink, and love love LOVED the secret re the hidden basement, ie AExcellently smexy, didn't skimp on the worldbuilding, I approve of all the religious!kink, and love love LOVED the secret re the hidden basement, ie Ariel's endgame plans. Strongly recommended for anyone who likes their monsters otherworldly and alien!...more
SongBroken is set in a world where people choose and declare their gender at 18; a world whiSometimes a book is a betrayal.
This is one of those times.
SongBroken is set in a world where people choose and declare their gender at 18; a world which makes no connection whatsoever between biological sex and gender, but has very defined, very strict gender roles. The colours you’ve allowed to wear, the trade you’re permitted to learn, how you tie your shoelaces – all these things, and plenty more, are determined by your gender.
The story, if you want to call it that, follows two individuals – Nils and Kell – who don’t fit in their culture’s gender binary. The entire plot is their suffering, their struggles, how they are again and again rejected and declared outcasts. They travel from their isolated mountain town to the big city, but things are even worse there; although they do eventually find their way into a sort of underground community of gender-nonconforming and nonbinary people, the character who wants to be a healer will never be able to complete her training or practise openly – and most people believe healing efforts from someone like her are actively poisonous and dangerous, and this won’t accept her help even when in dire straits. The other character, despite a passion and genuine skill for trading, will never be able to be a real merchant, taken on as an apprentice trader, or buy or sell or even haggle over purchases openly.
But it’s all fine, because in the end, Nils and Kel get together and presumably live happily ever after in their apartment over a brothel! A sweet and lovely brothel where fetishists come to have sex with all the cool nonbinary sex workers and everyone is friends forever! Isn’t it just the most perfect fairytale ending?
Never mind that Nils and Kel will be poor and struggling forever. Never mind that neither of them can do the work they love out in the open. Never mind that neither of them can ever go home again. Never mind that maybe it’s a bit dodgy to make the nonbinary safehaven a brothel, when so many trans and nonbinary people are forced into sex work out in the real world. Don’t think about any of that.
Reader, I can’t not think about it. And I’m not sure I’m ever going to forget the feeling of betrayal – of being absolutely gutted – that this is the kind of happy ending Osborne thinks people like me should get. Should be happy with. In a fantasy world, where there are literally no rules except the ones the author makes, this is the best that people like me can have?
I’m not sure I’m ever going to stop feeling the rage of seeing these kind of scraps thrown to people like me, and called a happy ending.
How dare you.
I loved this book, is the thing, right up until that ending stabbed me. Even while it catalogued all the ways in which Nils and Kell were struggling and suffering, I was impressed with the worldbuilding, and enjoyed the prose, and cared so much about these characters. And I was naive enough to assume that it was going to get better for them; really better, actually good, because what kind of story would it be otherwise? Why would you write a book about nonbinary suffering that didn’t get better? That’s not entertainment.
Unless you think it is.
Do you think the suffering of people like me is a good story? Would you read that for fun? Would you think all was well, the deviants got the best possible ending they could, if the story you read left them in poverty and ostracized and outright despised by the society they lived in? With no light at the end of the tunnel, no promise that change is coming, no hope that it will ever get better?
100 pages in and I'm just bored. The prose isn't lush or lovely enough to carry what is, for the first third of the book at least, a whole lot of dull100 pages in and I'm just bored. The prose isn't lush or lovely enough to carry what is, for the first third of the book at least, a whole lot of dull misery. It felt really simplistic and predictable, with Haelewise being a very uninteresting protagonist - there was just nothing unique about her personality or desires or goals, or even her suffering. The narrative treats everything, including the hints of magic and goddess-worship, as mundane, taken for granted, so there wasn't any wonder or beauty there either.
Even once I got to the point where Things Were Happening, I just wasn't interested. Every character felt flat, defined by just one or two character traits - the 'great romance' had zero foundation or chemistry - and it all just fell so flat.
Utterly disinterested in reading more/seeing how it ends....more
HIGHLIGHTS ~run, don’t walk, when a lynx comes calling ~“Have you considered…FLEAS?” ~Earth is a holiday resort now ~Martians are the new 1% ~lichens are tHIGHLIGHTS ~run, don’t walk, when a lynx comes calling ~“Have you considered…FLEAS?” ~Earth is a holiday resort now ~Martians are the new 1% ~lichens are the key to everything
The Moonday Letters is as beautifully strange, and as strangely beautiful, as all of Itäranta’s books so far, and I’m so happy that it was translated into English so I could read it!
Itäranta takes the bare bones of a story we’ve seen many times – one spouse uncovering, bit by bit, the other’s very unexpected secrets – and frames it within a distant but all-too-plausible future; one where Earth is ruined, scraping by as a holiday destination for the wealthy of Mars and various space-cities. Planet Earth has been reduced to little more than a series of theme parks and holiday resorts, such as Winterland, where those born off-planet can visit to experience snow and reindeer. (A few subtle clues make it clear that Winterland is almost certainly an amalgamation of Finland and Lapland post-climate change.)
But the story doesn’t start there; it starts on Mars, where Lumi, born on Earth but a recipient of a more-precious-than-gold visa, is travelling to meet her spouse Sol. The two of them are often apart for weeks or months, so Lumi keeps a kind of diary which she shares with Sol whenever she finishes a notebook. The Moonday Letters opens with Lumi beginning a new notebook, and this journal – which could also be considered a very long letter, written in first-person and directed at Sol – makes up the bulk of the book, although there are also articles, excerpts from fictional books, and emails between various characters included.
ANYWAY.
Sol isn’t at the rendezvous they and Lumi arranged; nor the next one; nor the one after that. At which point enough red flags have appeared that Lumi starts digging into Sol’s current work and past. What she finds has implications for the entire solar system and the future of humanity.
I don’t think it’s quite correct to label this an ‘eco-thriller’, simply because The Moonday Letters feels much more soothing than edge-of-your-seat. There are no high-speed chases, heists, daring rescues, or the like. It’s measured, calm, a slow and careful unfolding, question and answer following one after another like someone delicately placing the pieces of a puzzle on a table, one after another.
I didn’t hate this book, but I didn’t love it either. Although there were some lovely turns of phrase, the style was mostly quite dry; the conceit is I didn’t hate this book, but I didn’t love it either. Although there were some lovely turns of phrase, the style was mostly quite dry; the conceit is that this story is being set down in writing by a Christian monk or priest, and in fairness it very much nails that vibe, the style of a historical chronicle. The problem is that it’s not a style I enjoy; it felt impersonal and distant, and was very… It’s like a bare but elegant wooden carving; I can understand why others like the aesthetic, I can tell that a great deal of thought and skill went into its crafting – but it’s not for me.
It didn’t help that I didn’t especially like or admire or enjoy the main character, and the characters I found most interesting we barely saw at all.
HIGHLIGHTS ~clubbing with virtual reality ~music that brings the house down ~what is reality anyway? ~and can we change the answer?
If you know Koja alreadHIGHLIGHTS ~clubbing with virtual reality ~music that brings the house down ~what is reality anyway? ~and can we change the answer?
If you know Koja already, then she needs no introduction; if this is the first book of hers you’ve considered, then no introduction can do her justice.
Dark Factory is the intertwined story of Ari and Max, two very different people with – at least initially – very different views on immersive experiences. Ari is the heart of the eponymous Dark Factory, a club that uses a Santa-sack of technology to create a kind of catered reality for its patrons, a wild fantasy party that never ends and can’t be found anywhere else. Max, on the other hand, is a strong believer of meat over virtual, creating living and immediate art installations in garages and groves for people to experience in person, without Y – Y being an advanced virtual reality technology that more and more games and clubs are making use of.
They’re diametrically opposed characters, and when they first meet it’s with barely-repressed hostility – but quite quickly they realise that their individual philosophies are both missing what the other person has to offer. Ari, in particular, recognises genius in Max and understands how much more they could accomplish together – and it doesn’t take as long as you’d think for Max to come to the same conclusion.
I have to admit, I didn’t understand everything Ari and Max said and thought about what they saw and wanted to do, but the heart of it was the creation of experiences that are real, as real as possible – to the point of reaching for, and even creating, a new kind of reality. Woven through the narrative is the quiet but powerful assertion that people like Max – and Felix, an incredible DJ who hears a hum beneath the sounds of the world – are seeing something the rest of us can’t; are seeing, perhaps, objective reality rather than the subjective one the rest of exist in. The quest, then, if it can be called that, is Ari, Max’s, and Felix’s determination to learn how to show other people that objective reality – or even bring them into it with them.
'a historical novel in which the arrival of a mysterious woman at the 19th-century Russian court divides the second son of the tsar and his lover, a c'a historical novel in which the arrival of a mysterious woman at the 19th-century Russian court divides the second son of the tsar and his lover, a captain in the imperial army, when one of them believes her to be a creature out of myth, setting all three on a collision course with revolution'
Actual review:
Let the Dead Bury the Dead is a stunningly written historical novel, a story of a fictional attempted-revolution inspired by some of Russia’s real history. Epstein is, frankly, a word-wizard; her prose is absolutely gorgeous, and she knows exactly how to spin language into a spell that’ll make you ache for the beauty of it. Case in point: I don’t read a lot of historical fiction, and I definitely don’t read historical fiction about brutally cold places – not at all my favourite kind of setting! – but my gods, I just couldn’t resist Epstein’s writing.
Or the sheer amount of yearning in this book, all of which is queer, all of which cuts like a blade of crystallized honey. If there were awards given out for Feels, Epstein would take home the gold. My gods!
My favourite parts were the rewritten (or completely original?) fairytales Epstein included, which more or less divided the book into Parts. I adored those – some of them were even queer! – and I would happily devour a short story collection, if Epstein decided to write one. Especially if she wanted to write a collection of folklore-ish stories. Honestly, I would say Let the Dead Bury the Dead is worth it just for those handful of fairytales, but pretty much everything else about this book is also fantastic.
The characters are so believably complex, as is the situation; Epstein perfectly captures the need for and passion of revolution, and how easy it is for that to go wrong, or be misled – or maybe it would be better to say, how easy it is for that to be poisoned, by forceful personalities. By which I really mean Sofia, the maybe-maybe-not vila (a kind of nature spirit/faerie analogue from Slavic mythology), who burns like ice at the heart of this novel. Usually I find it frustrating when authors won’t commit to confirming whether or not the fantastical elements are in fact fantastical…but a) I was pretty satisfied that Sofia wasn’t human, and b) even if she was, she’s still a powerfully compelling character, drawing everyone and everything into her web of manipulation. She’s charismatic in a way that characters are often described as being, but often doesn’t come through to the reader; here, Epstein absolutely pulled it off. Sofia’s the kind of character you can’t look away from, even when your smarter self is screaming to get the hell away from her!
My one real hesitation with this story was with Marya’s sexuality; in the beginning, she seemed to be on the ace spectrum (and in a happy sapphic relationship despite that, which delighted me!) Obviously, there are plenty of ace people who still enjoy sex, but it’s made pretty clear that Marya is not one of them. And yet, she has several intensely sexual encounters with Sofia. I wasn’t really sure how to take that – is it more proof that Sofia isn’t human, and is seducing Marya magically? Did Epstein mishandle her asexual rep? Or can we just hand-wave it as ‘sexuality is complicated’, which is, after all, perfectly true? I’m ace myself, and just…wasn’t sure what the takeaway was supposed to be.
Regardless, this is a seriously great book that I strongly recommend to anyone who likes historical fiction in this time period/setting, especially if they’d also like complicated queer love and yearning....more
HIGHLIGHTS ~don’t go out after dark ~the twins are Not Okay ~medical mindfuckery ~parasitic possession ~seriously, eat the rich
Before we get started, can wHIGHLIGHTS ~don’t go out after dark ~the twins are Not Okay ~medical mindfuckery ~parasitic possession ~seriously, eat the rich
Before we get started, can we take a moment to acknowledge how ridiculously beautiful that cover is??? Because it’s absolutely stunning and I have spent far too much time just staring at it.
Ahem.
*
Delicate is the word that comes to mind when I think of Leech; not fragile but fine, elegant, like an exquisite piece of jewelry or a spider’s web shining silver in the twilight. It’s something about Ennes’ prose, like the words are being spun out of silk as you read; it’s something about the subtle, careful, precise way the worldbuilding unfolds; it’s something about how the progression of the plot is like walking on a frozen lake as spring arrives, the sensation and knowledge that the ice is thinning under your feet with every step you take.
It would have been so easy for this story to be a hammer, for this premise to be executed as blunt and brutal. Ennes could have written Leech that way, and it would still have been horrifying! But instead of a hammer, Leech is a scalpel; instead of being beaten over the head with how scared you should be, the horror is an infection slowly spreading through your tissues…until before you know it, you’re in real trouble.
Loading...
