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‘Maame' means woman in Twi, a nickname given to protagonist Maddie by her Ghanaian family, and one that's all too true as from a young age she is the primary caregiver to a father with Parkinson's. This coming of age novel juggles plenty of themes as 25 year old Maddie moves out from home and deals with the ways in which she was forced to grow up too quickly while in other ways, she is (seemingly) falling behind.
Race, sexuality, depression, family conflict and guilt are all deftly handled in this charming novel, and the tenderness that Jessica George feels towards Maddie is clearly felt on every page, and by extension is felt by the reader. Leastways, it certainly worked on me.
My main issue with this is that Maddie's conflicts are all external. Her own issues are derived from the way in which the world and people around her behave, rather than any precise character flaws she possesses. For example, one moment in which she has an emotional outburst to flatmates, which becomes a main point of contention in their respective relationships, is somewhat dampened by the fact that this outburst... is clearly understandable once things simmer down. It's a moment of upset and high emotion, sure, but in context it's also all external pressure. Much of the novel seemed to me to operate in this way, and in that sense it all seemed to wrap up too neatly and tidily.
Nevertheless this is a debut novel that shows such compassion and warmth, and certainly recommended for people who enjoy coming of age stories. I'm very aware that what is an issue for me, will certainly be a pro for others!
While I can understand people who dislike this novel in relation to the previous books, I am not one of them. The second person narration highlights Tambu's disconnect from not just her community and country, but also from the woman she has been forced to grow into by the forces around her. A quietly disordered, evocative read and one made all the more poignant following on from Nervous Conditions and The Book of Not.
(10/11/22) Though this book has no new content, it's wonderful to finally have a collection that puts the bulk of writing on the Second Age in one place.
The Fall of Númenor contains writing previously found in snatches in The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth, The Nature of Middle-earth, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien and multiple volumes of The History of Middle-earth. Thus, before today, if you wanted to read about the Second Age, you had to do your best Gandalf-in-Minas-Tirith impression and look like a crazy scholar surrounded by mountains and mountains of papers.
This book tells the story of the Second Age from beginning to end, with a focus on the events of Númenor (which makes sense; the most complete narratives of the second age are Aldarion and Erendis, found in Unfinished Tales, and Akallabêth, found in The Silmarillion) and puts everything into chronological order in the way recounted in the Tale of Years in the appendices of LOTR. Sibley also uses drafts of unfinished writings to fill out events, most notably in the (notoriously contradictory) stories of Celeborn and Galadriel, of which there are multiple versions. It features Celebrimbor and the forging of the rings of power, the establishment of Gondor and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men and the coming of the Third Age.
Discussion of the stories by Sibley, and how he chose to arrange them is also featured so it is obvious where things have been altered or arranged to be more cohesive. It is not unlike Unfinished Tales in presentation of the text itself, although the book as a whole is laid out in a way more reminiscent of the chronological semi-interconnected structure of The Silmarillion.
Illustrations by Alan Lee are also always welcome. It's a beautiful book, and as someone who has always been especially drawn to the Second Age it's one I'm thrilled to have on my shelf.
This and Ancestors are both so morbidly fascinating. Roberts discusses funerary and death rites in the Roman, Dark Ages and Anglo-Saxon eras of Britain, using a selection of archaeological finds to lay out history and educated guesses. These books are readable and informative, and cover a multitude of supposed genders, ages and cultures.
So much information from this time period has been lost. There are so many times we have to say “maybe” or “perhaps” but that doesn't make anything in this book less compelling. If anything, it makes it even more interesting.
This book focuses on the “Lost realms” of Britain, those that we know less of, smaller kingdoms that came and went alongside more well-known places that tend to hog the limelight due to the fact we know way more about them and that they were larger and longer established (think the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex). My personal favourite to read about was Elmed, located in what is now West and South Yorkshire, because I'm familiar with the area! The chapter on the Picts was also well done.
This book is great if you have an interest in this subject. It supposes an understanding of post-Roman Empire Britain and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms from the reader. If you have that, then read away!
I was looking forward to this and I'm genuinely quite disappointed. I liked Haynes' ‘The Children of Jocasta' (though I had issues) and I really liked ‘A Thousand Ships'. I also enjoyed her Pandora's Jar collection of essays.
‘Stone Blind' was just so... dull.
For a book about Medusa, there was remarkably little Medusa. Multiple points of view worked in ‘A Thousand Ships', a novel discussing at length the experiences of women during the events of the Iliad. Here, it rings hollow, though some are somewhat creative with the Medusa's snakes' chapter being particularly memorable (though even this one ends on an eye-roll provoking unsubtle final exchange). There is Perseus, there is Poseidon, there is Andromeda and Athene, all featured here in cartoonishly one-dimensional roles. Yes, they all feature significantly in Perseus' story and so their actions impact her. But this is said to specifically be Medusa's story. Due to the unfocused nature of the narrative I never felt any kind of urgency to get back to her. To her, or anyone else for that matter. Perhaps an approach not dissimilar to Madeleine Miller's ‘Circe' would have been more fulfilling in that sense?
Yet even as it stands, as a more traditional re-telling, it feels stilted. There is very little introspection and the narrator often interjects and tells you exactly how to feel. Beats you over the head with it, in fact. While I like the concept of a very opinionated and completely unreliable narrator, I don't feel it is executed well here. The abundance of attempted witticisms didn't work for me either.
There are some good moments of tension and atmosphere built well: Poseidon and Medusa in Athene's temple, for example, or the previously mentioned Medusa's snakes chapter. Those from the perspective of an Olive branch and a crow were also quite unique. Unfortunately, these were few and far between, and not enough to make the book compelling. Overall, it falls flat.
2/5 stars.
This is so frustrating (where is Winds of Winter?). It has been so long, I genuinely forgot that when George R.R. Martin writes, he can WRITE.
This novel is written as an in-universe history of the Targaryen dynasty. As expected, lots of politics, lots of incest, lots of dragons. Lots of memorable characters and moments amongst the bunch.
Martin marries real life history with his own world almost flawlessly. In the same way A Song of Ice and Fire is clearly influenced by the War of the Roses, here Martin is inspired by earlier English history, most notably the succession crisis after the death of Henry I, son of William the Conquerer, known as the Anarchy.
Recommended to anyone interested in the world of ASOIAF. It continues to be incredibly well drawn. It also continues to be incredibly frustrating. Reading an 800 page novel about the ancestors of Daenerys Targaryen is a lot to ask when we don't even really know how her own story ends.
A thoughtful and insightful collection of essays mainly considering Tolkien's writing and its relationship with his famous essay “On Fairy Stories”. While I didn't always agree with the conclusions drawn, the discussions were always interesting and, ultimately, is that not what these kinds of discourses are for?
Pretty great.
‘“...in the Bible, God split mankind apart. And I wonder if the purpose of translation, then, is to bring mankind back together. If we translate to bring about that paradise again, on earth, between nations.”
“Well, of course. Such is the project of empire - and why, therefore, we translate at the pleasure of the Crown.”'
It's 1828, the height of the British Empire, and after cholera sweeps through his home Robin, a young boy from Canton, is brought to England and raised by an inscrutable Professor to prepare him for study at the Royal Institute of Translation, a.k.a Babel, at the University of Oxford. Babel is also the heart of silver-working, magic through translation, and provides the British Empire with the ultimate power to continue gaining its wealth and influence.
In many ways this book is a subversion of all those coming of age Victorian novels. Think Dickens, David Copperfield or Great Expections, the story of a young man raised from nothing in order to become a good English gentleman, serve his Queen, Country and Empire. But how does one do that when you're not welcome in the first place? Robin is Chinese, losing his connection to his mother tongue of Cantonese, and struggles reconciling the parts of himself moulded for this very specific purpose and the parts of him that are, for all intents and purposes, seen as an irrevocable contradiction to what a perfect English gentleman should be. Once studying in Babel, he is joined by easygoing Ramy, a practicing Muslim brought from Calcutta to be raised by his family's employer in England. Letty is the overbearing daughter of a retired admiral and is desperate and grateful for this education after being raised for marriage. And Victoire, a Haitian woman forced into navigating Oxford (and Letty) with patience despite being continuously mistaken for Letty's maid alongside other aggressions “small” and large. With the exception of Letty, the three are brought for Babel due to their fluency in ‘exotic' languages, as it is believed that lesser studied languages are an untapped potential power. And thusly, can become yet another tool in the arsenal of Empire.
Then, Robin is approached by the mysterious Hermes Society, a group dedicated to undermining Babel from the inside.
A step up from The Poppy War trilogy in every way. Problems I had there including somewhat flat characters, bland prose are all improved upon here. There were plot “twists” that were plenty obvious, sure. Anachronisms can be a bother. Nevertheless, it's ultimately satisfying.
Mostly, I enjoyed the explorations of language, etymology and translation. Although not in any capacity that's fluent, I do have experience in studying languages/translation right up through college until the end of University and it's a subject I've always been super interested in, especially the meanings that can slip through the cracks. Translation is incredibly difficult. So few people understand that no translation is ever fully accurate. This novel explicitly discusses this fact in detail and how through translation knowingly or not, we can't help but change meaning and implications. I've not really seen a book, much less fantasy book, go into this level of detail on the subject.
The book is also unavoidably and unashamedly about the violence of colonialism, and the harm it not only does to the peoples' of colonised countries on a grand scale but equally what happens to the individuals who are taken from there, are expected to assimilate, and then be grateful.
Definitely recommended. Will probably be my favourite new fantasy novel of the year.
Leila Mottley's writing style is so assured, in many ways it's hard to believe she was only 17 when she began writing this. In other ways, it seems more obvious. This novel covers a lot: poverty, sex work, police brutality and corruption, addiction, and the realities of being a young black woman in modern America. And while Mottley has clearly done her research, at times the prose paired with the subject matters teetered on the edge of the melodramatic. That sounds like an extremely crass way of putting it, but sometimes it all just felt like TOO much was going on. Nevertheless, this was so impressive for someone so young, and I have no doubts that Leila Mottley has a promising career coming up, and I am very much looking forward to reading whatever she chooses to put out next.
Unsure if I genuinely liked this more than the First Law trilogy or if Abercrombie has finally just clicked for me. An unabashedly bloody revenge yarn with writing that is sharp as a tack. However, it is a brick, and while I love bricks, this particular brick started to overstay its welcome a little by the end. I wish goodreads did half stars: 3.5/5.
David Hone's books are so interesting and accessible (The Future of Dinosaurs, released this year, is great). This one, focusing solely on Tyrannosaurs, is also very good. I always find it particularly interesting to learn about the Tyrannosaurs that were in the UK. It's hard to imagine.
If you have an interest in dinosaurs the podcast he co-hosts, ‘Terrible Lizards' is also super accessible and fun!
Though this is said to be a story collection, it reads much more like a novel. Told in an episodic fashion, every “story” is a short, almost slice of life segment in the life of Dee, and his Penobscot community in Maine. We are given snippets of his childhood and adulthood non-linearly, which means the reader always questions how and why adult Dee ended up in the position he is in. This book deals with lots of issues; family problems, drugs, alcohol, grief, loss and native tradition, and Morgan Talty switches from laughter to heartbreak with flair and ease. That's life, I suppose.
Recommended, especially to people who enjoyed Tommy Orange's “There, There”.
A western about dinosaurs? This was practically written for me!
Anyone with a more than a passing interest in palaeontology will likely have heard of the infamous ‘Bone Wars' between Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, a vicious rivalry which is responsible for the fevered discovery of dinosaurs in the American West in the late 19th century. Over 100+ new species were identified in this period, including triceratops, stegosaurus and allosaurus, as each man was determined to discover more than the other and going to great lengths to come out on top.
This novel, published posthumously, uses this as the backdrop for the story of William Johnson, a (fictitious) student of Yale College engaged in a rivalry of his own. After making a bet with a fellow student, Johnson manages to wing his way onto an expedition led by Marsh to the Badlands, in an effort to discover fossils. After being left behind, he is welcomed to a group led by Cope, following hot on Marsh's heels.
What follows has the hallmarks of all classic westerns: gun fights, saloons and vast landscapes of wilderness, all of which serve to detail one young man's experience of the feud between two figures of historical significance in what is in many ways a coming of age story. While this novel takes place in 1876, it's worth noting that the so called Great Dinosaur Rush lasted for over twenty years. Crichton acknowledges this in an afterword, advising the reader that in plenty of respects he has actually toned down the feud between Cope and Marsh.
Furthermore, unlike many novels “discovered” (but often ghost-written) after the death of a celebrated writer, this does read like pure Crichton. I've only read Jurassic Park & The Lost World, but he has a clearly recognisable to the point style, and that was present here.
Definitely recommended for anyone with an interest in palaeontology, westerns or both!
A debut novel that is bleak but compassionate. While Sequoia Nagamatsu isn't afraid of delving into dark and uncomfortable topics, the underlying big beating heart of humanity that he seems to truly believe in is ever present.
How High We Go in the Dark is told in a series of semi-interconnected vignettes and tells the story of humanity over hundreds of years after a climate plague begins wiping out huge swathes of the population. Some episodes were stronger than others, but overall the quality was consistent and creative, leading to a surprising but satisfying payoff. The prose is contemplative and at many points beautiful. Maybe on a reread this could be pushed to five stars. For now, 4.5/5.
We Are Not Free follows fourteen Japanese-American teenagers from 1942 - 1945 when they're forcibly incarcerated in internment camps.
Fourteen POVs is a lot to pull off, and I'm not sure this book did. I completely understand why this was warranted: the internment of so many thousands upon thousands of people shattered the lives of so many, the effects of which reverberate to this day. Fourteen is a feeble number compared to the reality. Yet I felt as though I never truly got to know any of the characters, and seeing them again through different POVs felt very distanced.
However, it's an incredibly important period of history, and one which I've not seen Young Adult fiction tackle before. 3.5/5.