Mandy
At first I was really a little unsure about this book when I started it but tbh it grew on me. Theoretically I know this is a YA coming-of-age story set in modern England, so theoretically I should have been prepared for the very very teenage voice of the protagonist, but I think I still wasn't prepared enough for it. It made me cringe so much in the first few chapters. As the book went on and as we see our protagonist Georgia's thoughts and reactions to more experiences, the book definitely began growing on me and I even found myself relating a bit to Georgia. It wouldn't be fair for me to discount this book for being exactly what it's meant to be - a coming-of-age YA novel from the perspective of a teenager and written for teenagers and young adults - so in that respect i'd say it's doing a pretty good job in sketching out the struggles and peer pressures that someone in Georgia's place may face, especially as someone who is pretty much clueless about what “asexual” and “aromantic” even means.
I liked that this book focused so much on the importance and beauty of friendships too, something that I think a lot of people, and definitely a lot of younger people, are wont to forget. I like that the book completely rejected the idea that friendships are in any way less important than romantic or sexual relationships, and that Georgia grows into realizing this through the course of the novel.
I started this book for Pride Month. I went into this one just curious about how a coming-of-age experience might read like for an aromantic and asexual protagonist, but somehow came out of it wondering why I related way, way more to the protagonist than I thought I would - definitely not what I expected this book to do. For the record, I differ from Georgia in a lot of key areas - I had tons of crushes, both on people I knew IRL and also on celebrities, and I'm happily married in a heterosexual relationship now, so I know I'm not asexual, but it was still uncanny how much I related to Georgia. I have always found the idea of casual hookups, or even casually kissing strangers in a club as very, very unappealing. I'm learning that I might just be demisexual, another term that is fairly new to me. Anyway, really didn't expect to come out of this book questioning my sexuality.
Oh, and why are these teenagers obsessing over things like Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet? Aren't these relics from my time? Or are they so old that they're now retro and it's cool to like them again? I also narrowed my eyes a little that they were on Facebook groups - don't teens avoid that nowadays?
Overall, this book ended up surprisingly enjoyable and readable, and definitely worth reading for just about anyone. If you've left your teenage years far, far behind like me, just be warned that the voice and writing style may take a while to get used to if you don't read a lot of YA, but at its heart, this book is very sincere about its drive to encourage self-acceptance, something that is particularly important for teens to read about, but which I'm sure most adults can also relate to, having once gone through the same struggles and insecurities.
An excellent and well-crafted piece of fiction. Cloud Atlas isn't always the easiest to read, especially in its first and last chapter, but it's certainly worth reading. It's really hard to discuss this book without somehow spoiling something, especially given that pretty unique story structure, but I enjoyed ruminating about its themes on an unending recurrence of not just life but humanity, civilization, morality, and also the call to action of being a less selfish species. Of the different protagonists in this book, perhaps the one that really stuck with me the most is Sonmi, even though I had at first found her perspective hard to read. She's perhaps the most detached of the narrators, but because she is part of but othered at the same time, Sonmi gives some of the most astute and cutting insights into humanity's insatiable drive to consume at the expense of just about everything else, least of all one's conscience and morality.
This was really fun and though this was the first Chinese book I've read in a while, the language and writing style was accessible and easy to follow. I've read a couple of stuff by Higashino before this one (in their English translations) and I've enjoyed them. I wanted to explore more of his works but then realised that a majority of his books have not been translated into English but all of them have been translated into Chinese, which is why I started off with this one, the first book in the Detective Galileo series and actually a collection of shorter stories.
Actually, it was because I watched (and was a big fan of) the Japanese drama “Galileo” based on this series that I came to even know Higashino at all. Because of that, I vividly recalled the very first mystery featured in this book, roughly translated as “Burning”. This was also episode 1 of the first season of “Galileo” so it left an impression on me. Luckily, I didn't remember the solution so I got the nice experience of finding it all out for the first time again.
The titular Detective Galileo is actually physics professor Dr Manabu Yukawa, who aids his university friend and now Detective Kusanagi Shunpei to solve criminal cases. (Of course, there're a few new characters added into this team to spice things up in the drama) It probably wouldn't surprise anyone to know that Yukawa and Kusanagi have a pretty Sherlock & Watson dynamic, Yukawa being the eccentric intellectual with poor social skills who is always “consulted” all the time, and Kusanagi being the well-meaning, energetic, but ultimately clueless sidekick/policeman.
Higashino's stories here are comforting and fun to read, but ultimately didn't blow me away as some of his other later works have (see: Malice). I don't think these were meant to do that though - they seem like short stories to flesh out some main characters, their dynamics, and just sort of experimenting and getting a feel of a formula. That's a-okay with me though. Mysteries that don't require a lot of time commitment and investment, and act out like solving puzzles with a satisfying conclusion are precisely the reason why I love cozy mysteries so much. Higashino's writing and formulas were also very clearly influenced by Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, but since I love those two authors, I have no problems with that.
Generally a solid but somewhat run-of-the-mill collection of mysteries here, I'd recommend it to anyone who just overall love the formula of cozy mysteries, or is already a fan of Higashino or the drama “Galileo”.
Look, there are some books that you just kinda enjoy without really quite having a complete grasp of what's going on. This is one of those books. The writing is dense, the plot is nebulous at times, and it kept giving me that feeling like I was that one person in a conversation that had no context, no backstory of what's going on, and not getting the references or inside jokes. Nevertheless though, when you do eventually get some semblance of a plot driver about 30% through, the story becomes very compelling - although you'll never quite feel like you have a thorough grasp of what's going on, just an approximation at best.One of the most confusing things of this book, especially at first, is also the use of pronouns. Our narrator Breq is unable to distinguish gender identifiers in people (as per the Radch society she comes from), and so uses “she/her” on basically everyone. At first it just made me feel like everyone she was coming into contact with her female-presenting, but then other non-Radch people that she meets will use he/him on the same person that Breq uses she/her on, Seivarden being the earliest and most prominent example. This got a bit of getting used to, but at least the narrative does have Breq reflecting about this difference in gender identifiers in different societies/cultures/languages, so it's easier for us the readers to get used to it.The plot itself takes a long time to crystallize into something remotely clear enough to follow (about 30-40% of the book), but it does get pretty compelling after that point. There's definitely action here, and it also asks a lot of very thought-provoking questions about colonialism, imperialism, and when would the ends justify the means, in this case the act of making ancillaries. Having just read [b:A Memory Called Empire 37794149 A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1) Arkady Martine https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1526486698l/37794149.SY75.jpg 59457173], I thought the themes in this book were very similar but dealt with in a very different way. While Empire had a clear stance against colonialism, Ancillary is not quite so clear-cut, and in so being I think it leaves a wider space for debate and thought.Despite how confused I was for most of this book, I would certainly be continuing on the rest of the series.
Eh. I just reread Fall of the House of Usher earlier this month for Spooktober so I was really excited to dig into this one. A retelling of one of the most iconic horror stories of my childhood and by an author whose work I have been very much enjoying in the past couple years? Everything about this screamed a yes. Unfortunately, this fell a little bit flat for me, so this would be a 2.5/5. I felt like the whole plot reveal at the end was super obvious from as early as the 10-20% mark of the book, so I spent most of the book just waiting to see if I'm right or not, much to the detriment of the tension in the book. I will however say that the climax of the book was at least still well done and engaging enough.
Our story opens with our protagonist, Alex Easton, who is answering a letter from childhood friends, Madeline and Roderick Usher, stating that Madeline was in critical condition from a sudden mysterious illness. Along the way, Alex also meets a mysterious English mycologist, Eugenia Potter, as well as an American ex-medic soldier boarding with the Ushers, Denton.
The plot here only vaguely follows that of the Fall of the House of Usher and deviates from it more and more as the story goes on. A lot of things have been inserted into the story here, which I don't normally mind in retellings. I don't even mind if authors wanted to insert a new message, characters, or settings into their retellings of an iconic piece of work. What I did take issue with here is how random and meaningless the insertions seemed to be. A major new element here is the protagonist being from a fictional European country called Gallachia, in which apparently people who serve in the military are “gifted” with new gender-neutral pronouns, kan and ka, in order to distinguish themselves as a soldier. Alex being a sworn soldier uses those pronouns and it's used liberally in dialogue and narrative in the middle of English sentences: e.g. Alex checked kanself. Ka was bleeding. It just felt really really clunky and contrived. My bigger issue with this is that it never served any purpose in the story, not even to convey any sort of message, so I was really confused why this was even added in at all except maybe to chalk up diversity points.
Another more minor point is having Eugenia Potter as the aunt to Beatrix Potter, who is mentioned in a nudge nudge wink wink moment only once in the story. In the first place, I thought the presence of a mycologist, and a female one at that, self-admittedly rare as all hell in the time period, on the scene just seemed way too convenient as well. Then, we had another pointless reference that led nowhere, mentioned in my spoiler above.
As I mentioned, I pretty much guessed the whole mystery of this one from very early on in the book, not that the book was really trying to be subtle about it with the very first lines of the book opening with talk about fungi, and the actual book cover having so many mushrooms on it... it's not that hard to guess. This made the whole middle portion of the book feel a little draggy because - I feel like I already know what's going on, why can't the protagonist see what's super obvious in front of their eyes, can we get on with it already? It took away from the tension of the book, which is integral to creating horror.
I will give credit to the ending of the book which was still pretty engaging and still packed a few punches even though there wasn't a twist that surprised me. I had guessed it about the zombie fungus, but had imagined Madeline to be a complete puppet. Instead in the end it seemed like she retained some kind of consciousness of herself, even if it had been completely poisoned by that of the fungus. Or who knows, maybe it was the fungus itself pretending to be Madeline and talking to Alex? Also the part about Roderick having killed Madeline and thus her romping about with a broken neck was also a little bit of unexpected horror. Again though, didn't need Eugenia to come traipsing with her magnifying glass to tell me that those filaments are fungus... Would've also liked it if we had ended it with all of them getting infected rather than a deus ex machina element where we find out that they've actually not been drinking from the lake all along, and somehow sulphur was enough to kill all the fungus there. Just tied it up a bit too neatly imo.
Merged review:
Eh. I just reread Fall of the House of Usher earlier this month for Spooktober so I was really excited to dig into this one. A retelling of one of the most iconic horror stories of my childhood and by an author whose work I have been very much enjoying in the past couple years? Everything about this screamed a yes. Unfortunately, this fell a little bit flat for me, so this would be a 2.5/5. I felt like the whole plot reveal at the end was super obvious from as early as the 10-20% mark of the book, so I spent most of the book just waiting to see if I'm right or not, much to the detriment of the tension in the book. I will however say that the climax of the book was at least still well done and engaging enough.
Our story opens with our protagonist, Alex Easton, who is answering a letter from childhood friends, Madeline and Roderick Usher, stating that Madeline was in critical condition from a sudden mysterious illness. Along the way, Alex also meets a mysterious English mycologist, Eugenia Potter, as well as an American ex-medic soldier boarding with the Ushers, Denton.
The plot here only vaguely follows that of the Fall of the House of Usher and deviates from it more and more as the story goes on. A lot of things have been inserted into the story here, which I don't normally mind in retellings. I don't even mind if authors wanted to insert a new message, characters, or settings into their retellings of an iconic piece of work. What I did take issue with here is how random and meaningless the insertions seemed to be. A major new element here is the protagonist being from a fictional European country called Gallachia, in which apparently people who serve in the military are “gifted” with new gender-neutral pronouns, kan and ka, in order to distinguish themselves as a soldier. Alex being a sworn soldier uses those pronouns and it's used liberally in dialogue and narrative in the middle of English sentences: e.g. Alex checked kanself. Ka was bleeding. It just felt really really clunky and contrived. My bigger issue with this is that it never served any purpose in the story, not even to convey any sort of message, so I was really confused why this was even added in at all except maybe to chalk up diversity points.
Another more minor point is having Eugenia Potter as the aunt to Beatrix Potter, who is mentioned in a nudge nudge wink wink moment only once in the story. In the first place, I thought the presence of a mycologist, and a female one at that, self-admittedly rare as all hell in the time period, on the scene just seemed way too convenient as well. Then, we had another pointless reference that led nowhere, mentioned in my spoiler above.
As I mentioned, I pretty much guessed the whole mystery of this one from very early on in the book, not that the book was really trying to be subtle about it with the very first lines of the book opening with talk about fungi, and the actual book cover having so many mushrooms on it... it's not that hard to guess. This made the whole middle portion of the book feel a little draggy because - I feel like I already know what's going on, why can't the protagonist see what's super obvious in front of their eyes, can we get on with it already? It took away from the tension of the book, which is integral to creating horror.
I will give credit to the ending of the book which was still pretty engaging and still packed a few punches even though there wasn't a twist that surprised me. I had guessed it about the zombie fungus, but had imagined Madeline to be a complete puppet. Instead in the end it seemed like she retained some kind of consciousness of herself, even if it had been completely poisoned by that of the fungus. Or who knows, maybe it was the fungus itself pretending to be Madeline and talking to Alex? Also the part about Roderick having killed Madeline and thus her romping about with a broken neck was also a little bit of unexpected horror. Again though, didn't need Eugenia to come traipsing with her magnifying glass to tell me that those filaments are fungus... Would've also liked it if we had ended it with all of them getting infected rather than a deus ex machina element where we find out that they've actually not been drinking from the lake all along, and somehow sulphur was enough to kill all the fungus there. Just tied it up a bit too neatly imo.
I went in expecting some epic sci-fi to the tune of Dune, but I was pleasantly surprised that this book was probably one of the more digestible epic sci-fis I've read. It doesn't mean that it's simple though. This book is incredibly replete with things to think about, it's just conveyed in a fairly legible manner. Martine almost hand-holds us the readers into this amazing world that she's created, but shows us with every sentence some sharp observation to think about in relation to colonialism and cultural imperialism. Definitely going to continue on to the sequel (upset that this is not a longer series!)
Maybe a 3.25/5 for me. I still enjoyed the world and the shenanigans we get up to in this one, but overall I found that story generally weaker than the first book. Hopefully this is just 2nd book syndrome or something.
We rejoin sigil agent Al MacBharrais on yet another adventure, but this time in Australia, as he helps an agent-in-training, Ya-Ping, track down her missing mentor and fellow sigil agent, Lin Shu-hua. He's joined, of course, by his hobgoblin Buck Foi, and then also by the Iron Druid, who now goes by Connor. The adventure quickly turns deadly, of course, with demons popping up committing brutal murders along a nature trail.
So... I usually listen to a lot of audiobooks and it's pretty crucial to my reading progress. For this book, however, I found that I wasn't able to keep up at all with the audiobook. I'm honestly conflicted with how I feel about the narrator, Luke Daniels, though - he's definitely not bad. It might even be because he's too performative that I found that I couldn't get into the audiobook. He does a great job performing the various accents in this book - beyond Scottish, we now also have Australian. Because the whole book is from the MaBharrais's perspective, the whole audiobook was read in a Scottish accent. I'm personally not used to listening to audiobooks with Scottish accents so I found that I simply could not, for the life of me, keep up. I had to slow down the audiobook a lot more than my usual speed in order to even understand what was happening. I also wasn't a fan of Daniels's interpretation of Buck Foi. Foi is definitely boisterous but Daniels performed him as perpetually boisterous, which got a little grating and tiring. He sounded a lot like an Austin Powers character all the time.
That aside, I also felt like the book lacked focus. Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking for anything actually serious in these books - in fact, that's why I love the Iron Druid and now the Ink & Sigil series - because it's irreverent and doesn't take itself too seriously. But I also felt like most of the time I simply had no idea what was going on or why I should care. I did keep going however, because the action on hand was engaging enough, but I wasn't very invested in anything as a whole.
I also didn't like the involvement of the Iron Druid. I have nothing against him as a character, but I'm only 2 books into the Iron Druid series and I was going through this book perpetually afraid that I would get spoiled for something in the series. I'm not even sure if I did or not, probably because I'm not far in enough to know what counts as a spoiler and what doesn't. Nevertheless, if you're going to be writing a spin-off series that seems to be chronologically after another established and completed series, either declare very prominently that this series contains spoilers for another, or just don't include stories/characters from the other series so you don't accidentally spoil your readers.
Some spoilery thoughts: It was fine and dandy that the Morrigan showed up and swore Al and Buck to secrecy about her identity, but then it was really silly that she went about essentially tearing down her own disguise after that. I know she said she wasn't really adept at acting like an Australian woman but at some points she didn't even seem like she was trying, when she suggests to Ya-ping something about murdering men who dishonour them. Overall, although she was trying to keep her presence a secret from the Iron Druid, I felt like she was also trying her darnedest to expose herself.I guess perhaps the only thing that I really cared something about was the identity of Gladys Who Has Seen Some Shite. Her whole deal and how every god/goddess out there defers to her was really hilarious to watch, and it was one of the highlights of the book that I bothered to tell my husband about.
Despite all that though, I'm still invested enough in the series overall to want to continue on this and will put the next installment on my TBR.
I don't knowwwww, man. This book is so well-liked with all the great reviews and stuff but it just didn't work for me. It wasn't terrible by any means and had a fairly interesting story, but I just... found it a little draggy almost.
We get a split narrative here, first with Lovelace's brand new iteration after the end of the first book, now also stuck in a “kit”, i.e. a synthetic body that looks and can behave like a human but isn't. Pepper brings her back to her home planet of Coriol, where Lovelace gains a new name (Sidra), meets Pepper's friend/partner, and eventually learns about life as a sentient AI. In the other narrative, we learn about Pepper's origins, from her beginning as possibly some kind of clone, her life in a factory (literally a factory in which she and other girls like her are made), and then eventually how she ended up as a mechanic.
Book 1 was amazing for me because it had a strong plot driving things forward while also giving us the readers time to know the different members of the crew, the ways different species behaved and interacted, and the unique stories for each member. Because there was an underlying point of the story, I appreciated everything else the book was showing me about species that were gender-fluid, or had much more complex family units (more than two parents, most of whom are not biological), etc. This book - didn't have that.
Instead, Book 2 spends a lot of time in both narratives meandering and taking its time. We don't really have any crisis or a “mission objective” for the narrative until maybe about 75% in. In a sense, it reminded me a lot of Chambers's other novella series, Monk and Robot, but it worked for that one because the point of that book was to be contemplative and to almost function like Plato's Dialogues in the way it was exploring concepts and asking thought-provoking questions. In this one, I didn't get the feeling that that was its objective. Instead, we get smatterings of action here and there, smatterings of questions here and there, but honestly nothing that really had a huge impact on me, or which made me stop and think, “That's such a good question.” which I usually do with most of Chambers's work.
I've heard that the rest of the series will take its time with other characters and so aren't narratively linked to each other, so will still give them a try!
Firstly, what the hell was that ending?! I was expecting more closure, and was in fact waiting for the next chapter on my audiobook and then... it ended??? WHAT.
Overall I felt like this ending summed up my feelings about this whole book. It felt like it was going somewhere but I couldn't really quite figure out where, and just kinda meandered a lot. It was engaging but at the same time the pacing could've been much tighter.
There were definitely a lot of messages here that was interesting and at least I felt like it was fairly cohesive, but at the same time... it didn't feel impactful enough for me. I liked what it was saying about late-stage capitalism and expected that to tie in somehow with the origin/mechanism of Shen Fever but... it didn't. I wanted it to talk more about some very interesting ideas it brought up, like how the glossy designer labels are all manufactured in third-world countries! While the book wasn't too disjointed and was somewhat coherent in that I can definitely see a motif critiquing capitalism but I just had trouble figuring out what the whole post-apocalyptic situation was for and why Candace had to be pregnant and all that. I was left feeling like I was teased for something more interesting than it really was.
The plot itself was pretty engaging but yet I found myself wishing it would hurry up. The pacing could've been a lot tighter. I only took 3 days to read it but somehow it felt like forever and I was wondering why I was spending so long reading this book. When I was reading it, it was engaging and I found myself trying to form theories on what the author wanted to say through these plot and thematic devices used. All in all I feel like there was a lot of good stuff here but it wasn't tied together very well and I wasn't left feeling like I learnt anything new here.
Also, Shen Fever was eerily prescient about the Covid pandemic, even more so than Station Eleven was.
3.5 to 4 stars. Having read a few novels by Higashino from both his Galileo and Kaga series, I have come to expect great things from him. The last Kaga book I read, Malice, was simply outstanding, while others like The Devotion of Suspect X was incredibly This one, unfortunately, came up a little short. For Higashino's high standards, it was a little underwhelming, but as a mystery novel this was still pretty good.
The mystery centers around the murder of Mineko, a recently divorced woman living on her own in Nihonbashi. The book takes a while to get going, but it's incredibly engaging when it does. Instead of the typical formula where we either see events leading up to the murder, or having the murder happen very early on in the story, we instead start the story with the investigation but without any actual details as to the murder.
Most of this book is pretty much Kaga going around the different family-run businesses in the neighbourhood of the victim's home and asking them things. We get to learn tiny bits and pieces of the murder itself and about the victim through the accounts of these people, but mostly we get to see slices of their lives and the problems that they deal with. Though Kaga is interested in what they know about the victim and the events of that day, he takes the time to do little bits of side investigation to help them solve the small issues plaguing them, mostly domestic disputes. Because of this, the book is pretty episodic which honestly works for me.
We only really get to know about the murder, the victim, and her background very late into the book, within the second half. When we eventually get round to solving the actual murder, it does feel a little - straightforward. The conclusion of the mystery didn't really surprise me, and I didn't feel as mindblown about it, as I am used to feeling with Higashino. Nevertheless though, I enjoyed the way we dipped into the daily lives of all the families in the neighbourhood to slowly and gradually build up a picture of the victim.
Definitely going to read more Higashino after this.
2.5/5. I'm honestly a little conflicted, I kinda feel like this didn't work for me as much as it did for so many other people, given the amazing reviews on GR. Timey-wimey plots are always a hit or miss with me, and more often a miss, but that wasn't actually my main beef with it.
Firstly, I felt like there were so many interesting messages and themes that were touched on but then never explored - like the criticism against British colonialism at the beginning, and then it suggested an interesting link between the pandemic crossing borders with how colonizers brought diseases to indigenous peoples across the world. But then we barely got time with that thought before we go into some timey wimey plotline.
The time travel plot is fine in itself but I also feel like it wasn't as much explored as it could've been and I guess by the end of the book, I was just left with a deep sense of, “What was the message here? What was the point of this book?” If we're meant to just read this as a simple time travel plot without any reference to the larger commentary, then there's so much about the worldbuilding and storytelling that I couldn't get behind. I couldn't quite connect with any of Gaspery's motivations because it all just happened so out of the blue without any in-depth explanation. Why did he give up on his degree of criminology? Why did he want to join the Time Institute and why was he suddenly so passionate about it at the drop of a hat? It all seemed so convenient that a completely unqualified person like Gaspery without any necessary qualifications only needed a shoo-in interview with Ephrem to become what seems to be a highly skilled and professional job like being a time traveller.
I was also really confused about an entire segment (basically the whole part with Mirella and Vincent. I know Vincent played some part in the main story here but there was so much time spent on Mirella and her husband and the Ponzi scheme and Vincent's mysterious disappearanceThen I read some GR reviews and realised that this whole thing was basically a trailer leading to St John Mandel's *other* book, Glass Hotel, which I haven't read and therefore all of this didn't make sense to me. That was a bit annoying tbh... I like intertextuality but it's still gotta make some sense to people who may not have been exposed to that other work, especially since this isn't a series and isn't advertised as a continuation of anything. While the events referred to didn't turn out to be an integral part of this plot, to me as someone who hasn't read Glass Hotel, it felt like a plotline that could be important enough to warrant so much time spent dwelling on it by the characters but ultimately just went nowhere. The Station Eleven reference was a bit more subtle and therefore better, but both of these references still felt more gratuitous than anything. I feel like the author was trying to break a lot of 4th wall here, cos also why did one of the characters need to have a "double-sainted" name besides making reference to herself? I don't mind authors breaking the 4th wall but a lot of this just all felt frustratingly gratuitous and not actually serving any purpose.
Honestly somewhere between 3.5 to 4 stars. This was still pretty darn good and if you enjoyed the first book, you're likely to enjoy this one too. But I will say that the first book does feel a bit more intense and page-turning than this one did. I was also a bit less satisfied with the ending of this one, but I still gave it a pretty high rating because 1) Avasarala and 2) that epilogue.
I have to give props to Corey for just being so masterful at writing some delightfully entertaining science fiction. Like the first book, this really feels like a TV show in a book, in the best possible way. It's the kind of TV show that keeps you at the edge of your seat as you uncontrollably binge the whole season. This isn't going to be as deep and philosophical as a lot of major science fiction works, but the entertainment value of this one is through the roof.
Avasarala is probably one of my favourite characters introduced. She's a grumpy, possibly Indian grandma who also happens to be one of the most influential political figures on Earth. She cusses as much as she breathes, but her curses are some of the most delightful pieces of savagery I've seen around. Though clearly Avasarala's job is pretty much her whole life, we also get to see her as a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. Hey, who knew career women could also have a wholesome family life? Everything about her was so relatable tbh.
I continue to like Amos more and more, and also to have a complicated impression of Holden. I like him being around inasmuch as that we get to see his heroics being continually shot down by the Rocinante crew. He's definitely got a case of annoying-heroism but I like that the book uses him to dismantle that male-protag stereotype that's all too common in SFF. I just love it whenever Amos or pretty much anyone else in the crew hauls his ass back in line. I also gotta say that I didn't look forward to reading Prax's chapters in the beginning because they were just so depressing. Maybe it's the time of life I'm at now but anything to do with children being treated badly really just gets me.
The plot in itself is actually... kinda similar to book 1? We start the book with the POV of someone who goes missing, and then the POV of someone who witnesses a massive amount of death and destruction and is generally discredited. A character in the book wants so badly to find the missing person. We then spend a lot of time in the book hunting around for said missing person, and as usual we have Earth and Mars perpetually threatening to go to war in the background. That's pretty much the same beats in books 1 and 2.
Spoilery thoughts: I am very indifferent towards Prax for most of the book, but felt that he was sus near the end. Unfortunately though there was no big reveal at the end of this book to make that pay off. Aside from his love for his daughter and botany, it kinda felt like Prax didn't really have much substance - which made me wonder if he was hiding something. It was all very subtle (and may also be me overthinking things) but I felt like when other characters like Avasarala etc. observed him casually, something always felt a little weird, or off, or just not right. However, I'm glad that Prax and Mei were reunited in the end, it's just all so happy that it leaves me a little sus, like it's too good to be true.And that's also my issue with the ending, really, and which probably made me knock a star off. The stakes felt higher in book 1 and the ending sequence to it was suitably intense. In this one, I don't think I ever felt like the stakes were as high, but I was still expecting a similarly explosive ending - it didn't happen. Holden's short sojourn aboard the Agatha King was pretty anti-climactic, and then even the confrontation between Amos, Prax, and Merrien went by pretty quickly. Nobody was in any danger in that one. I fully expected Mei to have been in some way affected by the protomolecule, if not infected exactly, but that didn't happen either. I expected her to exhibit some worrying sign suddenly after they brought her back to the ship - but that also didn't happen. I'm not sure if this might possibly be a development in later books, but my philosophy for series in general is that if there are not even hints about it in this current book I'm reading, it still counts against it as something unanswered, as not everyone would read to the end of a series.What did pull me back was that epilogue. The bit with Holden endlessly watching the video of Venus, Naomi leaving the area, and then... Detective Miller appearing. That sent chills down my spine. The reveal was done so well there and it made me exclaim out loud. What the hell is he still doing here? How is he still alive or in one piece? How did he get onto the ship without any one knowing? Is he infectious?!?!?! Ahhhhh!!!!
This is increasingly shaping up to be a series that I'll likely see all the way through to the end and good luck to me on that, seeing as how many books there are in it.
I first read this one ages ago, so even though this is a re-read, I pretty much went into this one without an idea of what the solution was. I had a vague recollection of the solution halfway through, though, and turns out my memory was better than I expected. Still, this was a great and entertaining read.
Though this seems pretty Egyptian on the outside, what with the title and the Egyptian-looking setting on the cover, the story is very much all-English (and a little bit American). There isn't much of Egypt in this one besides the names of the locations that the characters go to, which is a shame considering this book was inspired by Christie's own trip to Egypt with her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan. Christie herself became an archaeologist in later life!
Poirot in this one was at least very much involved in the mystery from start to end, which I enjoy a lot more than other stories where he just dips in in the last 30% to solve the mystery. We also meet some very memorable characters like Linnet Ridgeway, Simon Doyle, and Jacqueline de Bellfort. The love triangle between these three isn't anything fresh but I thoroughly enjoyed how much the emotions of guilt and betrayal popped off the page.
Even though I vaguely remembered the solution halfway through, this was still a pageturner for me. I stayed up hideously late because I couldn't stop reading it. There's something magnetic and so easy and even comforting about Christie's writing and the way her mystery unfolds.
I also went to look up the cast list of the 2022 film just to see who they would cast in each character. I have to say it was a pretty stellar list (without having actually seen the movie to judge their performances). Gal Gadot and Letitia Wright in particular being Linnet Ridgeway and Rosalie Otterbourne seemed very well-casted. Arnie Hammer, actually precisely because of all the sleaziness and controversy surrounding him at the moment, was also an ironically good fit for Simon Doyle as well.
Though perhaps not as mind-blowing as Murder on the Orient Express or the Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Death on the Nile is definitely a quintessentially great Christie to read and re-read, whether you're new to her or a long-time fan.
4.5 stars. This book is truly not for the faint of heart. It was confusing, it was wild, it was bewildering - and yet, I had an absolute blast. I've never read anything quite like this series, simultaneously befuddling me at every turn but yet more engaging than most books I've read. If you enjoyed the first book, you would quite likely enjoy this one - but be warned that you'd still be confused as all heck for most of it.
If you already enjoyed the first book, there was probably just something about the writing or the story or the world-building that clicked for you. This series and Muir's writing is definitely not for everyone, but if it clicks for you, you probably would be hard pressed to find a more stellar example of what she does well. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed the extremely unique voice in her narrative, a blend of almost grimdark fantasy with black humour all delivered in the tone of high-schoolers somehow.
I'm also the sort of reader who's pretty OK to just let the story go on even if I'm not completely understanding what's going on and trying to catch the main gist as I go along. This served me particularly well for this book. It's common for fantasy/sci-fi books to be pretty obscure for the first 20-30%, sometimes even up to 50%. But this book... this book read like a fever dream for a whopping 70% of the book before you get any kind of clarity on what on earth is happening. I can definitely see that not working for a lot of people, but I was just enjoying myself so much with the narrative voice despite not having a single clue what was going on. Also, be warned that a lot of this book uses the second-person narrative.
Behind it all, there's a really fascinating world and story that Muir is building here. It's just sometimes hard to have a good grip on what the world is actually all about because we see it through some very convoluted perspectives. Nevertheless though, I have always been pretty satisfied with how the stories conclude for both the first book and this one, there's just enough of a pay-off to make the fever dreams clearer and less of a hot mess, and just enough of a cliffhanger to make you wild for the next installment already.
Spoilery thoughts: I felt like what really pulled me through the first confusing 70% was how beautifully it was done that we always just almost touched Gideon but never did, and the way the narrative and Harrow and every other character always seemed to just dance around Gideon's name just made the ghost of her feel even more real despite the absence. When Gideon eventually did come back, I never realised how much I missed her narrative voice until just then.I probably missed the answers to some of these from the confusion of the ending but: Who the heck is Wake and why is she a Commander and why is she so involved with just about everyone in the First House? So was it also established that she was also the Sleeper? And why was the Saint of Duty trying to kill Harrow through the whole book? Who was Anastasia/Annabel? Did we find out who the Body in the Tomb was? Why did Augustine and Mercy go all that length to conceive Gideon?
I very certainly will continue this series.
I read this in one sitting during a weekend sojourn in the library with my friends. Honestly, this was pretty entertaining and engaging enough. I've enjoy watching Benedict Cumberbatch's work and only know a smattering of his history. This book provided a pretty good overview of his life thus far, and I suppose it is no coincidence that half the book is dedicated to his career after Sherlock.
Actually the most interesting thing I picked up from this book is an interesting divide/debate that I never knew existed in the UK: about how public school boys like Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, Damian Lewis, etc. seem to have an easier time at hitting the big time in acting, and perhaps whether there is a divide between this seemingly elite circles and all the other struggling actors who may not have such a prestigious background. The book is not primarily concerned with this topic so it doesn't go too far into this except citing what Cumberbatch himself has said about it. He is himself actually from a relatively modest background, even if he did attend the prestigious Harrow School (though his parents apparently had to really scrape the barrel to fund that) and thereafter Manchester University. Though we don't actually get to know much more about the matter, it's just a little food for thought that stuck with me through the book.
The book also made me realise how Cumberbatch is friends with a lot of the other British actors whose works I've followed through the years - James McAvoy, Jonny Lee Miller, Matt Smith, and of course Martin Freeman. I now also have a few other shows from Cumberbatch to check out - Fortysomething also starring Hugh Laurie (of Blackadder, Jeeves and Wooster, and House MD fame) and Anna Chancellor (Caroline Bingley from 1995's Pride and Prejudice), Parade's End sometimes touted as “the thinking man's Downton Abbey”, and of course the BBC radio sitcom Cabin Pressure.
Probably somewhere around 3.5 to 3.75 stars. Overall, this was a book that had a refreshingly unique premise. There were some important issues in it that were just a bit touch-and-go and weren't explored as in-depth as I would wish, and I felt like the book could do with a bit more focus and impact, but overall this was not a bad read and while the 1950s misogyny in it has softened somewhat today (though perhaps not in certain fields of study), a lot about it is sadly all too relatable.
Our protagonist is Elma York, an ex-WASP pilot for the USA during WW2 and also mathematics genius. She and her husband Nathaniel York are taking a break in the outskirts of Washington when a meteorite impacts D.C., wiping everyone and everything within a large radius. Aside from the immediate devastation, climate scientists ring the alarm bells to state that the greenhouse effect from the meteorite impact will greatly accelerate and heat up the planet, making it uninhabitable for humans. Suddenly, the space race becomes imminently important, and no longer a race as much as a collaborative international effort - if humanity is going to survive at all, colonizing other more habitable planets in space may be the only way out.
This book is set during the early 50's and reimagines how human history may have turned out if such an extinction event had happened just then, right at the beginning of the space race. Most his-fic books merely use time periods as a pretty backdrop for characters who still sound and act and think very much like they're from 21st century, but this one - doesn't, and I have to give Kowal credit for that. This also means that we see some attitudes from pretty much every character in the book that would be pretty unpalatable to us today - misogyny, racism, sexism, anti-semitism, fanatic nationalism... the works. I liked that these attitudes weren't just attributed to the antagonists of the novel while the protagonist and the people allied to her are miraculously liberal-minded just so that they'd be more appealing to a 21st century readership. While Elma is certainly feminist for her time, and her husband Nathaniel is almost unrealistically supportive of her career in STEM, both of them still occasionally slip up with thoughts that are very much of that time period. Elma gets moments where she is racked with guilt for not being a proper wife, because she's not taking care of the bills or doing house chores. Nathaniel, while supportive, sometimes still struggles to balance his support for Elma with the pressures of the all-male and misogynist environment that he works in, being the lead engineer of the IAC (the book's fictional equivalent of NASA).
I did enjoy that we saw character growth and development in the book, especially for Elma since the whole book is from her perspective. At the beginning of the book, though not actively racist, she is still fairly sheltered. The first time she enters a bar frequented by Black people with Eugene Lindholm, a Black pilot who hosts Elma and Nathaniel after they escape the devastation of the meteorite impact, Elma realises that she has never been in a room with so many Black people before, and makes some faux pas along the way. She does advocate for diversity in the Lady Astronauts being hired by the IAC, championing for Helen, a Taiwanese pilot and “computer” (a name given to mathematicians in the IAC, I suppose?) and who gets frequently passed over because she isn't white.
That being said, however, I felt that the book barely scratched the surface of these topics. A lot could have been done for a book set in the 50s, but ultimately Elma was still the white heroine of the story, set apart from her peers even though she acknowledges that they are just as deserving as her. I wouldn't usually have a problem with this because that's how most stories go, but if the topics were touched on in the book but then we still have an ending where we only have one white person winning out, the issue of racism and diversity feels like they were just shoehorned in to check mass appeal boxes. We did see Elma struggle massively against the weight of misogyny through the book, but then I think not enough was said about the privilege she had because she was 1) white and 2) married to a relatively influential engineer - both of which were briefly acknowledged but then never delved into.
Another huge part that didn't work for me in this book were the really awkward intimate scenes. I'm totally fine with sex scenes when they make sense for the plot but it just didn't really feel necessary at all in this book, and there were so many! Not only that, but they were all bogged down by really, really cringey maths and rocket-inspired sexual innuendo. E.g. ”I'll have to see how good you are at launching rockets.” Oh my god, I get it, Elma and Nathaniel are a very, unrealistically happily married couple whose sex drives are always on high. It just felt like very out of place, and also detracted from the other more important issues I'd have liked to see discussed more in the book, as I mentioned above.
We also have our primary antagonist for the book, Lt Parker, misogynist supreme and primary obstacle in Elma's way. I appreciate that Kowal tried to give him some depth instead of being a cartoon villain, but I also felt like he flip-flopped a lot between being weirdly tolerable and even giving Elma some opportunities, to downright blackmailing her and then actively trying to leak potentially damaging information about her to the press. It was all very confusing.
I also felt like the ending could've been more fully fleshed out - everything felt a bit too rushed and convenient to get the nice ending that we expected. In particular, I was very surprised that we didn't even get to see a last farewell scene between Elma and Nathaniel, considering how much intimacy we've been seeing from them through the book. However, I also really liked how we saw Elma's anxiety play out in the way she kept having thoughts about it could be the last time she talked to this person, or the last time she did this thing, in the days and moments leading up to her first space flight. It was incredibly relatable for me as someone who also has those anxious thoughts leading up to an event that I'm fearful and anxious about, so I appreciated the accuracy of that.
Ultimately, it was entertaining enough. I may pick up the next book but probably not so soon.
3.5/5. This was a re-read for me but I first read it so long ago that I've completely forgotten everything about it.
The pacing for this one was a little off - it felt mostly slow through the whole novel, but then really ramped up very quickly at the end. There were some plot twists at the end that I really didn't see coming so I bumped it up to 3.5, though originally I would've given it 3.
Miss Marple is supposed to be the detective for this one but she really hardly has much to do with the whole mystery, with a lot of the groundwork being done by Lucy Eyelesbarrow and Inspector Craddock. Miss Marple does turn up during the denouement and magically whips out the answer out of nowhere, though. Nevertheless, I did enjoy Lucy's character so I wasn't too pressed about that.
Overall it was a pretty enjoyable, dare I say even comforting, mystery to pass the time and was great for that purpose, though definitely not in the same league as Christie's more famous works.
“Even when I'm far away, the convenience store and I are connected.”
Omg, this book was actually SO FUN, and yet so provocative at the same time. I will say, though, I felt like this book is probably best appreciated by readers who have spent some time in Japanese, or minimally an Asian community and culture, because there was a lot of satire about the social structures, prejudices, and biases that are still fairly rampant in society and culture here. I also got bonus points of appreciation because Japan is probably my most visited holiday destination and I have an extremely vivid memory and impression of their convenience stores, and the visceral experience it is shopping in them as well as the almost robotic-like standard of service their staff never fail to emulate.
Keiko Furukura has always had trouble pretending to be human. It's not that she's an alien or anything, this isn't a sci-fi or fantasy book, but she's always had trouble understanding the underlying social codes, etiquette, and behaviour. She might be written to be autism-coded, but it's not definitively labeled in this book. In any case, quite often her thought process sounded like an AI going through deep learning to behave more like a human being so that she could fit into society. Despite this though, her narrative voice was personable, often relatable, and overall genuine and sincere in her wish to feel like an accepted part of society, as well as not to hurt the people she at least appreciated for having been kind to her in the past, like her sister.
“When I first started here, there was a detailed manual that taught me how to be a store worker, and I still don't have a clue how to be a normal person outside that manual.”
So, Keiko takes great joy in her job as a part-time convenience store worker, a job she has held for the past 18 years, since she herself was 18 years old. There is a very fixed set of rules guiding her behaviour, and she is valued for following those rules to a T. She enjoys how predictable everything is.
“It was fun to see all kinds of people... don the same uniform and transform into the homogenous being known as a convenience store worker.”
Despite finding joy and fulfillment in her job, she is still constantly being judged by her friends and family for “not being normal”, in that she is 36 years old and still in a “dead-end job” as a part-time convenience store worker. Without going into too much spoilery details, Keiko takes some steps to experience life as someone who is accepted into the fold of society.
There is definitely some satire and criticism here about the misogyny of society as well as the gender and sexuality stereotypes that is still deeply entrenched here. As someone who was born and raised in an Asian society, I think it hit pretty hard. It's easy to judge this book on more left-aligned values and find basically every other character in this book annoying except for Keiko, but I think it's a lot grayer than that over here. There's still a pressure to get into a relationship, to get a full-time job, to get married and have kids, even for me and even in this day and age. It might be a different experience from someone living in another country, especially if they were in USA or the EU, but differences in culture doesn't make any one culture less valid or more backward than the other. Anyway, being from a very similar culture to that of Japan, I could absolutely get the predicament Keiko was in and it hit much harder for me. There's also some commentary here about “normalcy” and how it feels like a performative act most of the time, just that for most of us it just comes more subconsciously than others (like Keiko, who has to make a much more conscious effort about it).
“The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of.”
Overall, I enjoyed this a ton but I'm not sure whether I'd recommend it to just about everyone. To anyone who is far removed from Japanese and Asian societies, this book might be quite bewildering and illegible (I hope it isn't, but I can imagine that it would be). Nevertheless though, it was quirky and had a sense of humour that had me chortling out loud at some parts, with a relatable and endearing though eccentric protagonist too.
For what it is, this book took wayy too long for me to finish. I've been keen on reading this book for a while now but honestly was pretty disappointed. It wasn't overtly offensive in any way, I just found everything really bland and monotonous.
So, a few major issues I had with this book: the pacing was slow, there was a lack of an Overarching Crisis, there was too much and too little exposition at the same time, and the characters were so flat with such similar-sounding names that I couldn't tell most of them apart.
The pacing of the book was just so slow. It often felt like so many chapters passed without a ton of things happening. I could skim through so many of them without really missing much. It was also made even more slow because I couldn't quite figure out what was the crux of the story, that one big question or problem that all the events of the story is leading towards or looking to resolve. Because there wasn't that focal point, everything else happening in front of me just felt pretty pointless and draggy. I had thought at first that it might have been linked to the accident caused by Rhenn at his portraiturist master's place, but then later on it was quickly resolved (or at least the narrative leads us to think so for most of the book with no intimation of anything suspicious). There's some vague war-ish things happening in the background but we really just hear a lot, a lot, so much conversation about it and nothing much else.
That leads me to the other big issue of the book: there's so much info-dumping. There's a world to build and lore to give, but the way this book does it reminds me of dialogue from an RPG when the main character is talking to NPCs. For example:
”What made you decide on me?”“A number of things. I will tell you. That I promise you, but not now. [etc. etc. etc.]”“Is it also that it's safer to have an imager do it?”“That certainly is something that makes it easier, but that's never been an imager trained as a portraiturist, and we're vain enough that we'd like an accurate resemblance.”“I can see that.”“Keep following Master Draffyd's instructions [etc. etc. etc.]”“That's true, sir.”
Almost all the conversations between Rhenn and Master Dichartyn go pretty much like that, sort of this bland back and forth dialogue that made me feel like I was reading a transcript from a game where you can only pick one out of a few statements/questions to ask an NPC. The parts where I went [etc. etc. etc.] are basically Master Dichartyn infodumping things on to Rhenn and therefore us the reader, and it was just so much and so repetitive to read after a while. We only really saw Rhenn either a) dating, b) getting into a Dangerous Situation on the streets, or c) in the classroom. That's pretty much it for the entire book.
The names of the characters were honestly also so similar to each other and all of them felt flat to me that I couldn't for the life of me tell them apart. Yet, there were so many names so I just felt a little overwhelmed and demotivated a lot of the time when there were so many characters being talked about at once. The only characters I really remembered was Rhenn, our protagonist, Master Dichartyn his mentor, and Seliora his love interest. Everyone else is a huge blur.
The writing style is pretty simplistic although that in itself is not a big problem. I was in the mood for a simple writing style when I started this book so to me that was actually a point in its favour. The problem I had with the writing here was more that it was monotonous and didn't quite engage me.
The climax of the book was also... not really much of a climax. Sure, some action happened, but it didn't feel like anything bigger than any of the other action bits in the rest of the book. I didn't know what the stakes were and honestly didn't really care what happened to any of the characters. I was honestly surprised that the book ended on that note, I had hoped for a bigger crisis and resolution to round things up.
Tbh, I'm not likely to continue on this series. I might give Modesitt's other series, Magic of Recluce, a go since I already own a physical copy, but really hope that it engages me more than this one did.
This feels like a textbook so I find it hard to rate and review. overall, I can see why this book was and still is very important and I kinda wish someone would condense the messages in here to make it more accessible to others who aren't in academia because the messages in this one really should be read by everyone. it's almost disheartening how relevant and relatable Said's critique of global power structures still is even today, almost half a century after this book was published... I have to admit that I didn't quite understand or I wasn't in the headspace to dissect, especially in the latter half of the book, but overall it was still an impactful read, I feel like I look at society and pop culture, and all these daily things that we take for granted a bit differently now and see how Orientalism (though it is an outdated term and stems from antiquity) informs so much of our daily lives, even modern-day conflicts from WW2 to the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and most recently the conflicts in Syria and the tension between China and many other countries. This was just so eye-opening. 4/5.
This was a fantastic and comforting reread of one of the early Marples.
Colonel Protheroe was never beloved by any of the inhabitants of St Mary Mead and more than one person had cause to wish him dead. When he is found by the Vicar shot in the head in the study of the Vicarage, suspicion turns on any number of people in the village who had motive and opportunity. Of all the old cats in the village, it is Miss Marple, neighbour to the Vicar, who takes the most active participation in the case.
The writing style felt a little... almost basic sometimes. The sentences were short and to the point, but I think it's this that makes Christie such an easy and comforting read, and such an accessible classic. It's really the plot and the amount of weaving together storylines and motives that makes any Christie novel stand out. I haven't read this one in years and I thought I had a vague memory of who the culprit was - I was completely wrong! Not only that, I had also completely forgotten how all the red herrings in the story were resolved and it was fun revisiting this mystery with completely new eyes.
For Christie's detectives, I've always preferred Poirot over Miss Marple, but in so doing, I think a lot of the Miss Marple cases don't stand out in my memory as much so they're definitely still worth revisiting. Miss Marple isn't bad, but I just take issue with her philosophy that everything follows some kind of pattern that has already been done before. It's not inherently false, but a lot of the parallels she makes also feels a little too convenient.
3.5 stars. This was a serviceable enough mystery. It was pretty engaging while it lasted and had a pretty decent cast of characters. I just thought that the gimmick of it could've been better developed. The murder victim is our narrator Willowjean Parker's old friend from the circus she used to travel with before she left and found an alternative job as assistant to the detective Lillian Pentecost. Ruby Donner was hired by the circus for the number of tattoos she had inked on her body, but was discovered stabbed to death one night, and the only person with the biggest motive is the Russian knifethrower Val, who also happens to be Willow's mentor.
My issue with the gimmick of the story might be a spoilery so hidden under spoilers here: The title, “Murder Under Her Skin”, makes it sounds like Ruby's tattooes would play a big role in the resolution of the murder. Indeed, we do focus a lot on the various designs inked on Ruby's skin, especially since Will was offered the chance to dress her body for the funeral. In the end, there is only one clue to the murder tattooed on Ruby - the daisies on her chest, somehow alluding to a past pregnancy which only has a very, very slight connection to the bigger conspiracy that is unearthed at the end. For a book that pretty much references tattooing in its title, I would expect tattooes to play a much larger role somehow.
It was hard to rate this one. On one hand, it's a pretty solid mystery without being overly generic. On the other, it doesn't pack oomph-y plot twists that make a mystery truly hard to forget.
This was a really fun read. There were several out-of-this-world elements to it but I found those tolerable if you focus on the main premise of this book: how a “fake” family of 3 people harbouring secrets of their own will deal with that tension while inevitably getting closer and more attached to each other.
Our protagonist is a spy, codename Twilight, who receives a mission to get closer to a reclusive politician. The only public appearance this politician makes is when he attends parent-teacher conferences at the school his son is attending: the prestigious Eden Academy. In order to get close enough to his target, Twilight has to create a “fake” family and pass off as a parent of a legitimate enrolled student in the Academy. He adopts Anya from the orphanage, not knowing that she is in fact psychic and knew from the very beginning about his true job as a spy and the nature of his mission. Later, he meets and proposes a fake marriage to Yor, a salesgirl with a predilection for kicking ass, also without knowing that she is in fact a secret assassin. The scene where Twilight “proposes” to Yor was truly iconic.
While the premise might have the tendency to get gritty, the story is uplifted by good doses of humour. It doesn't hurt to have little Anya around to lift the mood as well. There're some slightly more conservative values in here, at least in this first volume. The reason why Twilight needs to find a fake wife in the first place is because Eden Academy emphasizes traditional family value - so no single-parent families apparently.
Nevertheless, this was a light-hearted, episodic, and enjoyable read and I'd look forward to reading more from the series.
4.5 stars. Interestingly, I think this is a book that one might enjoy more if you listened to the audiobook (the one narrated by Moira Quirk) than if you just simply read it on text. I had DNFed this book in 2020 but then came back to give it 4.5 stars and I think Quirk's narration played a big part in this change of mind.
Gideon Nav wants to escape from the dreary House of the Ninth, but her plans are foiled by the Reverend Daughter of the House, Harrowhark Nonagesimus. Gideon is coerced into being Harrow's cavalier (something like a right-hand person and bodyguard) as she travels to the planet of the First House to undertake trials to hopefully become a Lyctor, a member of the God-Emperor's House of the First.
This book is - confusing. It also doesn't do much to ease readers into the world so be prepared to feel utterly lost at sea for the first few chapters. That was what made me DNF three years ago. If you push past it and find something to like about this book, chances are you're going to really enjoy it. Even now, after finishing this, I'm not sure I completely understand what was going on. I certainly only had half an idea of what was happening during the climax at the end. But what kept me going was just really being there for Gideon and her relatable bungling persona.
I was such a fan of Quirk's voice, tone, and performance that even when I hadn't an idea what was going on, I was still happy to bask in the moment and continue. At no point did I feel like things were getting draggy, nor did I have to keep checking my progress to see how much more I have left of this book (which I do for almost every book I read).
The action in this book really only ramps up after quite a bit of preamble, maybe at the 40-50% mark or so. I think I must have finished almost half of the book in one day because it got so exciting that I couldn't put it down. It also took me up to about the halfway mark to even start distinguishing the side characters, because there were so many of them and I had no idea what part they were going to play in the plot until they did.
The premise is also so wild that it's fascinating. Each House is a planet in whatever planetary system they're on. The House of the Ninth are essentially some kind of religious order revolving around bones and skeletons, and they paint their faces like skulls a la Día de Muertos. I get by imagining that the House of the Ninth would basically be like Pluto in our Solar System - far away from the Sun and somewhat forgotten by the rest of the system. Plus, Pluto = Hades = Lord of the Underworld and there's something definitely Underworld-y about Drearburh, the planet of the Ninth, and its religious order of bone nuns. Although it's sort of sci-fi with the interplanetary politics and travel, I would say this is more fantasy than sci-fi, given that the plot revolves a lot more around bone and death magic.
Somewhat more spoilery thoughts about the book and ending: I don't usually enjoy reading enemies to lovers because the trope has been done to death these days but I was actually quite a fan in this one. Harrow and Gideon's bickering was one of the main reasons why I pushed on in the early chapters.”Do you want,” Gideon whispered huskily, “my hanky.”“I want to watch you die.”Harrow also felt like a more intense, more powerful, and more ruthless sort of Hermione-like figure, but it went perfectly with Gideon's dumbassery. Although I would say that Harrow and Gideon's chemistry reminded me strongly of Draco/Harry in fanfics, which is not at all bad in my books :PI was suspicious of Dulcinea all along and I was satisfied that I was right, although I had expected that she had masterminded something or that she might even be a beguiling corpse, not that she was someone else entirely. I didn't quite understand why Gideon had to sacrifice herself at the end, but it did bring tears to my eyes when she had to part from Harrow. The fact that her body disappeared though... I'm slightly hopeful that somehow or other Gideon might return. They do specialise in death magic after all.
While I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I can see why it might be polarizing to many people. The writing style and humour is probably not universally appealing, even if it was very much up my alley. I also wouldn't market this as a sci-fi recommendation because there's barely any sci-fi elements in it. So perhaps if you like reading about bone and death magic, and a humourous bickering frenemy relationship, this is definitely one for you.
This manga was first published in 2002 and it shows. It's light-hearted enough but chock full of shounen tropes that may have been the rage 20 years ago but feels a little exhausting to read today.
Ichigo Kurosaki is a 15 year old teenager who can see ghosts. Upon seeing an invisible girl in his bedroom, Rukia Kuchiki, who introduces herself as a Soul Reaper, Ichigo also learns that he is somehow imbued with a massive amount of “spiritual energy”. There are two types of ghosts in the world - Wholes and Hollows. Soul Reapers are in charge of sending all these spirits onwards to the Soul Society, although it usually ends up with lots of action chasing down and slashing Hollows, who appears as gigantic monsters.
Firstly, there's the trope of the OP self-insert male protagonist, a classic of so many shounen manga. Ichigo almost from the very first page is overpowered af, just clueless about how much power he possesses. We don't know anything about his background, history, etc. but are immediately asked to believe that he's basically the second coming. The whole first episode with a Hollow attacking his family is solely there to blatantly hammer in a few points to readers: 1) Ichigo is morally upright and, despite his prickly exterior, will do anything to save his family; 2) Ichigo is exponentially more powerful than the only actual Soul Reaper we've met in the story, Rukia. We don't know why, but we just need to accept it anyway; 3) With no training whatsoever, Ichigo is not only able to drain Rukia's entire “dark force” to fight the Hollow, but also able to flawlessly and intuitively do what even experienced Soul Reapers do everyday; 4) It's all a very convenient scene for Rukia to basically info-dump all the lore about Wholes, Hollows, Soul Reapers, Soul Society, etc. etc. to Ichigo and therefore to us, the readers.
Now, all of this might be pretty standard fare in manga of the time but I'm almost certain that there are plenty of manga out there that tell their stories in a better and more immersive way. This is all not to say that I'm DNFing Bleach - I may continue it because there's some comfort in the fairly standard but still interesting magic system and lore here - but the first volume really isn't the most mindblowing piece of manga ever written.