Kate
Hm.
So, I really liked this book. I love how abrasive Calamity is. She's mighty flawed, and it's really great to follow the narrative from her perspective. That is, until she gets all homophobic. And she doesn't appear to be on her way to learning a lesson by the end either. While I love that there's more than one queer person in this book (and a bisexual man! rare in media!), and their portrayal is nothing but positive, we only see them through Calamity's eyes, and she's NOT into it. I keep wavering about this...I might have given this 4 stars if not for the the homophobia, and I keep thinking that it's just the character who is homophobic because the queer people were happy and proud and lovely and fed right up with Calamity, and that tension did add something to the story and the character development...but it also took away from that by being too much of a focal point.
Other than that, Calamity is a fabulous character. I know a lot of reviewers didn't like her style, but I thought she was great. Vain, self-centered, yet caring and regretful. She's been hurt and has hurt and she feels shitty about all of it, but she doesn't necessarily deal with it well.
I love all the subtle magic as well. I love the Caribbean selkie fairy tale, and Calamity's menopause magic that I suppose she gets from her water-mom!. I look forward to reading more from Nalo Hopkinson!
First I want to say that I hate the cover of this book. It's terrible and I wish it was better because the book is better.
I really enjoyed the universe in this book. Robots are awesome in general, and I especially like reading about AI interacting with humans. The whole deal with the failsafe and free will was really fascinating. This is one of those books where I might forget what happened in the story but I'll be thinking about the universe it happened in for a long time. What does it mean to be fond of something if your fondness is built-in? What does it mean to be “built-in” if you're a robot anyway? Isn't everything built-in? If you can believe that robot feelings are real and true, then how come the failsafe feelings aren't? Are Amy and Charlotte and Portia more real? Does more real have to mean more human? Are Javier's failsafe fondness and Amy's non-failsafe fondness different in any meaningful way anyway? Amy doesn't want to hurt humans any more than Javier does, but she's capable of it. Maybe it means more if you choose not to do it because you want not to do it, and not because you'll die if you do. Anyway, I'm thinking of more stuff, but I don't want to make this review too long.
I should have just stuck with [b:Baby Be-Bop 71331 Baby Be-Bop (Weetzie Bat, #5) Francesca Lia Block https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1390274115s/71331.jpg 1506] and my useless memory of reading this book in high school. This was much too precious for me. Only My Secret Agent Lover Man had any sense whatsoever. Plus, holy cultural appropriation! Weetzie Bat and her friends are the most oblivious hipsters of all time, and I can totally see why I would have liked this book when I was 13...everyone is an idiot except me, no one understands these amazing things that I understand...This precious group of kids has looked outside their gingerbread house and seen bad things, so they live in their tiny happy bubble that no one understands, and when they do happen to get a whiff of something real, they can't handle it. Duck's friend has AIDS...that's awful. Instead of being there for him, because we learn that Duck never went to the hospital, he decides to run away to San Francisco and drink because it made him realize that we can kill each other by loving each other. Dirk drives off to find him while Weetzie and MSALM stay at home with their creepy babies and when D&D come back they all just hug each other and gaze lovingly into each other's eyes and I guess who cares that Bam Bam is still in the hospital? His illness is such a nice plot point for our main characters.Plus there's this crap:“‘That's a great outfit,' Dirk said. Weetzie was wearing her feathered headdress and her moccasins and a pink fringed mini dress. ‘Thanks. I made it,' she said, snapping her strawberry bubble gum. ‘I'm into Indians,' she said. ‘They were here first and we treated them like shit.' ‘Yeah,' Dirk said, touching his Mohawk.”They named their baby Cherokee.“Cherokee looked like a three-dad baby, like a peach, like a tiny moccasin, like a girl love-warrior who would grow up to wear feathers and run swift and silent through the L.A. canyons.”I think it's worth noting that none of the characters are Native.
I love this book! A great exploration of what different colours mean to different people. “‘Brrr!' Grandma says. ‘Gray is cold. Like the sky before a storm.' But my gray is as cozy as a curled-up kitten and the sound of soft rain on the roof.” It's so lyrical and the art is really gorgeous, I especially like the lush green forest. Check out Catia Chien's beautiful paintings!
I wasn't sure what to expect from this book from reading the description on the back. It's been catalogued in my library under science fiction, which I'm not entirely sure is the right designation; though non-fiction isn't quite right either. There are some definite drawbacks to the system we use! Anyway. 21st Century Robot is a manifesto, sci-fi book, and user manual. There are lots of people involved, not least of which is Intel. This book goes through the 21cR manifesto: A robot is imagined first, easy to build, completely open source, fiercely social, intentionally iterative, filled with humanity and dreams, and thinking for him/her/itself. Sounds good to me! The tone is a little overly excited and back-patty for me - lots of exclamation points.The manifesto is explained, and the conception and creation of Jimmy (the robot) is described. The process of designing and building Jimmy is really interesting, as he is meant to be as accessible as possible. If I had to describe this book/manifesto/robot/idea in one word, it would be social. The robot they designed was meant to be cute and appealing to humans while still looking like a robot. The point of the robot is not to be a slave to humans, but to be a friend. They talk a little bit about why it's important for your robot to have its gender or non-gender specified - male, female, or neither - but I didn't really buy it. Something-something we would treat a robot differently based on its gender something-something gender roles something-something we got an expert to talk about this!Jimmy's designs were given to some robotics students, and each group got a different budget to work with. He was designed to be as affordable as possible - his shell is 3D-printable, in smaller pieces that are then fitted together - I think they said it took a few days for one version of Jimmy to be printed. The website (http://www.21stcenturyrobot.com/) has a bunch of plans for building Jimmy for less than $500 up to over $12,000. The code is designed so that each robot can have a different personality - for example, your robot might be kind of nervous so you could have it run away when it hears loud noises or look at the floor when someone talks to it. The best part is that everything is open source (or at least it will be when the website is complete, I guess) - anyone can tweak the designs at any level from hardware to code to build something personal. If you have the knowledge, you can build your own robot based on the designs on the website or your own design, and if you're not so inclined, you can buy a kit for $1,600 (that includes all the moving parts and inside bits - you still have to print the outsides). If you are a pro coder, you can mess with all levels of the code for Jimmy - if you're not, they are developing robot apps that you can mix and match to develop your robot's personality, which I think is one of the coolest parts of this project. Being able to manipulate your robot's personality quickly and easily would be so great for someone who doesn't want to or can't put in the time and effort it would take to become proficient enough with coding to do that all from the beginning.So as much as I think this is a really cool project, the “anyone” I've been talking about is not all-encompassing. You need the know-how to build something, more so if you want something cheaper. You can get a kit with all the parts you need (minus the shell) and presumably easy instructions to put it all together, but $1,600 is still prohibitive for many people. For the less than $500 version, you need to know where to buy the parts, have access to all the necessary tools, and understand the jargon enough to follow the directions. With every version, you need access to a 3D printer for enough time to print out the pieces and the money to purchase the material - based on what I skimmed in the robot designs, that ran from $70 to over $250. The library that I work at has a few 3D printers accessible to the public at a low cost, but printed projects are limited to 2 hours. There have been many larger projects printed in 2 hour increments and then attached, but doing that with Jimmy's shell would require the know-how to break up the 3D image files into the 2 hour pieces in a way that could be easily fitted together, not to mention a lot of time to print and the cost.In between all of this information about designing and building social robots are a few Asimovian short stories about a roboticist who goes around the solar system trying to figure out why a particular robot would attack its owner or steal a dead body. The ideas were pretty compelling, though the writing left a little to be desired for me. Here is one of the author's short stories that wasn't included in the book, about mining robots who start going to church (that pdf includes some really nice watercolours too!).I've giving this book 4 stars because the sci-fi interjections reminded me of [b:I, Robot 41804 I, Robot (Robot, #0.1) Isaac Asimov https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388321463s/41804.jpg 1796026] in a good way, and because all the meat of this book is pretty exciting. I look forward to seeing what comes out this project in the future!
I vaguely remember reading [b:Weetzie Bat 44353 Weetzie Bat (Weetzie Bat, #1) Francesca Lia Block https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1392416825s/44353.jpg 946181] when I was in high school...I especially remember one of my friends thinking it was one of the greatest books ever written and I more or less agreed, but I remember absolutely nothing of it now. I don't even think I have it marked as read on GR!This book stands alone though, which is good because I don't remember anything about Dirk. I'll probably pick up Weetzie Bat again, because I like Block's style of writing. It's like if an optimistic hippie designed the world while high, and you were listening to them describe while also being high. Everything is twee and zen and smells of patchouli. All of the main characters are pretty and well-meaning and have absolutely fabulous names. I wouldn't necessarily want to live there...I'm glad the book was short because it is rather precious. It was the perfect length to live in Block's cutesy world.And of course I love a story about a gay kid.
This book was depressingly enchanting.
I liked that the main character was a minister in love with God and I didn't find him irritating or unbelievable or preachy. I'll pretty much love any story you give me about first contact so that helped. Though I did have a bit of trouble trying to think of what kind of anatomy would allow a creature to be able to pronounce all english sounds except for “s” and “t”? They can say “th” and “v” and nasal sounds but not “s”? All other stops except for “t”? Anyway. The story has melancholy heart. Maybe you can get my drift from all the opposing adjectives I'm using. It was beautiful and sad and slow. Really compellingly slow. Even when nothing was happening I couldn't put it down. Michel Faber has beautiful prose and I'd really like to read more of him.
I KNEW EXACTLY WHAT I WAS GETTING INTO THIS TIME.
Yes I'm going to rant now so bear with me. TW for talk of suicide and sexual assault.
Where to start though? Maybe the cover? Here we meet our protagonist Colene (as in Colene, Colene, Colene, Coleeeene, I'm begging of you please don't take my man) and her psychic horse who is good for absolutely nothing. Colene is 14 and suicidal. You know how we know she's suicidal? She keeps telling us that she's suicidal. Have you ever heard of character development? Maybe allowing a character's actions to show us their inner feelings? Nah. I mean, there are some sad stories in her past that kind of feel like they're supposed to explain her current “depression” and “suicidal thoughts” but it never feels like they are linked at all. Plus the sad stories are so over the top. Her parents hate each other so much that her dad is always out sleeping with other ladies and her mom stays at home and gets drunk every night. On the rare occasions that they end up in the same room together, they scream at each other until they fuck on the floor. Without care that their teenage daughter is hanging around, causing her to peace to the shed in the backyard. Since her parents have no point except to be a terrible thing in Colene's life, they really don't need to be so comically awful. But subtlety is not in Piers's vocabulary.
Alright, lets move on to Piers Anthony's sexism. Which I imagine will be the entire rest of my review. So Colene meets this dude, Darius, from an alternate reality, which are called modes, who is much too old for her but since she has a nice body they fall in love. In Darius's magical mode, people can transfer emotions directly using magic. The grand poo-bah of his society is the dude with the best magic power to multiply emotions, and he goes around the kingdom multiplying joy for his people. He's always a man (even though he doesn't have to be because there's a lady who's really good at multiplying joy and she was refused the post because IT'S ALWAYS BEEN MEN). The way that he spreads joy is by literally sapping his wife of her own joy until she is depleted of happiness. When she's all used up, he discards her for a new, more joyful wife, until he strips her of all positive emotion and gets rid of her too. Every few years he destroys a woman's life and moves on to the next one. I don't think we really need to talk about how messed up and sexist that is. It is explicitly said that women can't be grand poo-bah JUST BECAUSE come on ladies...and nowhere is it said that the person being sapped of their emotions must be female but it always is. OK, so Darius doesn't like this deal and he goes traipsing through the modes to find a lady from another universe that maybe won't be depleted by his job so he doesn't have to ruin people's lives, how nice! There's a messed up scene though where he has to go to an old poo-bah to ask about taking his spot while he's off in the modes, and the guy condescends like crazy to his “love-wife” and they both basically treat her like she's an idiot, all “she doesn't know what she wants, we'll teach her, it'll be a sad lesson, but as men she must know to listen to us because we are right alll the time”. That's basically how it goes.
There's a lot of stuff that Colene thinks about everything that could potentially be explained by the fact that she's a 14 year old girl who lives in a sexist society, but Piers Anthony is not that good a writer and I've read enough of his other books to know that all this disordered thinking comes from his brain. She has some dumb ideas about gender roles that are straight from Piers. She has some damaging thoughts about her own gang rape: “I was so drunk I may have even thought it was fun at the time.” This would be a good point to address the fact that victim blaming is rampant in our society, and that many victims begin to internalize the idea that maybe it was kind of their fault if they were drunk, but none of this is addressed at all. Piers is DEFINITELY not nuanced enough to show that while his character maybe believe something like that, it is wrong and a symptom of societal problems with how we react to assault victims and gender roles. “It sure taught me to be wary of liquor and of men!” Here's another overwhelming theme of Piers Anthony books: all men are always thinking about sex and are all potentially driven out of control by a lady's body. He doesn't realize how insulting that is to his entire gender? “She did know the nature of men; they were always interested in sex, and took it when they got the chance. That night with the boys–she had represented Opportunity.” “With a woman, sex and love were aspects of the same thing. That was why the abuse of sex was so horrible; it soiled love. But with a man they were in different ballparks. A man could love one woman and have sex with another. It was part of the basic misunderstanding between the sexes.” EEUUUUUUCCCHHHHH.
Let's go through the female characters, shall we? Colene we've done. Later on in the book, there are some female slaves - bred to serve, basically - who are defined by their sex and what they can provide with their bodies. There are male slaves also, but they're not nearly as sexual...presumably because women don't desire sex outside of love so there's no need for male slaves to be sexual. We just assume that gay people don't really exist here. There's another female character later, who is useful because she can sort of see into the future, but doesn't talk and is pretty much an ignored character because she's an OLD LADY and therefore UNATTRACTIVE and therefore NOT IMPORTANT.
Let us move on to the other most major female character in the book. She has so much potential for being completely bad-ass except for the bad luck of being written by Piers Anthony. Her name is Prima, and she's from Darius's mode. She had great magic, enough to definitely qualify for being grand poo-bah of spreading happiness, but because IT IS NOT DONE she wasn't allowed to do it. “I was attracted to her not for her beauty or personality, for she was not remarkable in these respects...” She is introduced as not being very good-looking, and for the rest of her time in this book, they will not shut up about what she looks like. Because her society was sexist, she set off into the modes to see if she could find a society in which women were equal. Fuckin' A. As Darius moves through the modes, he is captured by sentient dragons, only to find that Prima was captured by them 20 years prior, and, still sharp as ever, helps him to escape. Sounds like she's pretty competent and take-charge! “...I must make obvious attempts to seduce you, so that the dragon will know that we are potentially breedable. I realize that this will be distasteful to you because I am too old and unattractive, but our lives will be at stake, so I ask you to behave in a manner the dragon will find reasonable.” “...you have seen my body. Please answer with candor: do I retain sexual appeal?” Oh yeah, did you just survive for 20 years in a prison camp, learning the language of your captors, before planning and executing an escape plan with a dude you just met? And actually the first thing you can think of is how attractive you look to the dude? Nooooooo Piers, noooooo. Don't worry, Darius, true to form as a man, WILL NOT STOP TELLING US WHAT HE THINKS OF PRIMA'S BODY. “She seemed to be about forty and not unhandsome...Her feet were in sandals, and were filthy, the toenails growing down and around in a manner that might be practical in a wilderness for protection against abrasions, but were detestable aesthetically. Her hair was long and somewhat unkempt, as if maintaining appearances was pointless here.” Here, being the PRISON CAMP. “Then she removed her worn shirt, showing her haltered bosom. It was a good one, considering her age...he saw that she was lean, rather than plump, but her posterior was well rounded and her breasts were of adequate mass...in the appropriate apparel her body would be attractive enough...she was older than he, and not beautiful (thought not ugly), but she had a good mind to go with her excellent power...” I get the impression that Piers thinks he's doing something good by mentioning her great magical power and intelligence every time he mentions her looks - we may be obsessed with what she looks like, because she's a woman so OBVIOUSLY, but she's also a woman who is smart! Novel, huh? Here's an idea - what about a female character who is strong and smart and capable full stop? And maybe who cares what she looks like? Next time, can we try to use the same amount of physical description words for the lady characters as for the guy characters? Can maybe not every character be constantly thinking about women's bodies? Every character! All the time! It's really hard to get into the story when I have to stop reading to roll my eyes and give the finger to a book.
So probably if I'd read this as a 14 year old I would have been really into it, but as an adult I recognize that Piers Anthony is a sexist dude who will not stop writing female characters even though he's sooo baaaad at it. I didn't comment on much of the story in this review, because while his ideas are pretty creative and interesting as usual, they are just so bogged down with terrible awful terrible sexist awful things. This is a great book to hate read though.
I like that the protagonist is an Orthodox Jewish girl who wants to slay dragons. I also like that knitting was involved. I don't love the art style, and I didn't really connect with Mirka. Also, there's something about this book that made me think about how sometimes heroes do a lot of slaying, and that just doesn't strike me as something to value. I mean, it's nice if you can save a village or whatever from being eaten, but slaying dragons for the heck of it actually seems like it might be a red flag for psychopathy. I don't support breaking through the glass ceiling by climbing the corpses of mythical creatures!
Some of those thoughts may be somewhat tangential to the novel itself. Which just tells me that I wasn't really into it.
This book was better than I was expecting...even though I don't know what I was expecting, considering it's a book in which a woman has sex with a bear that was pushed to publication by Robertson Davies and then won the Governor General's award. There's a lot of conflicting information there. But, as I was reading it, I could not judge Lou for her choices. I mean, I would not have made the same choices as her, but I can't really blame her. Especially considering the bear is a smybol of...men? or her life? or something? I'm sorry, it's hard to read past the text to the subtext when the text includes a woman fondling a bear's testicles.
So Lou is an independent young woman, unattached, with a career that she kind of likes but is starting to bore her, she's in a rut, she can't make connections with men on any meaningful level, so she jumps at the chance to live on an island in the middle of nowhere for a summer cataloguing books. Only there's a bear who lives on the island with her, a pet of the previous owner of the house, and she's expected to feed the bear but not much else. She enjoys the solitude of the wilderness, and soon develops a bond with the bear, and one night, in a fit of passionate loneliness, allows the bear to, y'know, help her out. She didn't seek out the bear, she just...didn't stop him. Can you blame her? I mean there are plenty of ways for a woman to react to that which don't look like bestiality but whatever floats your boat. It was consensual anyway. Lou falls in love with the bear over the summer, because he doesn't judge her or make her feel empty. She's fully aware of the fact that he's a bear and doesn't have feelings, but love is love! In the end, while attempting to actually consummate their relationship, the bear rips her back open with his claws ('cause he's a bear, we all saw that coming) and decides that she's actually not really in love the bear anymore, and maybe she should just look for a new job to get herself out of her life rut. If it takes a bear going down on you/mauling you to figure that out, I kind of feel like you need to take a look up outside of your own self once in a while.
I actually liked this book quite a bit. The writing is good, and I think when I read it again one day I'll be able to look past the sensational bits and hear the message of the book a bit better, but I do recommend it! Unless you don't like swear words. Or bear testicles. On the other hand it is reallllly Canadian!
I really liked this book. I was engaged the whole way through. While I agree with some of the other reviewers that some of the characters, Mort(e) especially, lacked development, I also found that he was easiest for me to identify with. Even if it didn't seem like there was enough there to justify Mort(e) searching for Sheba so single-mindedly, it still made sense to me; I can imagine that being thrust suddenly into sentience and understanding of one's slavery, I'd want to search for that one comforting piece of home. Not to mention that while I understand the bloodthirsty uprising of the animals, having been made to realize their plight, I'm not a fighter. Mort(e), despite his skill at it, just wants a normal life, whatever that is in this new world of upright, sentient animals.
This book brought up something I love to think about even if it wasn't really explored here - how justified would the bloodbath be if animals gained sentience suddenly? The characters in this book referred to their previous slavery multiple times, but I'm sure many of us don't believe we are keeping our pets enslaved. There's at least one reviewer on this site even who said they reassured their pets that they're loved members of the family! But look at the way we treat wild animals and especially livestock: no one can argue there's not cruelty there. Even with the pets we treat with love and provide every comfort to, if you replaced them with humans, slavery is the exact word. But many would argue that since our pets are not sentient, we are justified in keeping them neutered and de-clawed. It's for their own good, I guess. Pets evolved side-by-side with us so really, they're exactly suited to the lives they live in our homes. I'm not trying to argue for or against that; it's actually more interesting to assume that we are morally justified in the way we treat our pets (barring abuse, of course). So then say they gain sentience for some reason or another. We are now morally obligated to treat them like people, let them make their own decisions, not keep them in our houses against their wills, etc. I could understand their pain and anger at realizing they've been kept prisoner, been physically mutilated to serve our purpose and not theirs. Can we be blamed for doing something that was reasonable at the time? Are we responsible for the pain and suffering caused for a creature who now understands what it means to be a parent and to want children, but is unable to? Can we mitigate the anger by immediately apologizing and creating social structures to support their new-found sentience and prevent further abuse? Would they understand the way we treated them before sentience and forgive us? I actually think this is more compelling when thinking about AI, because there are very good arguments that the way we treat animals, even pets, is unjustified. It would be much easier for us to create AI that mimics the state of being alive while knowing that it is not “truly” alive. But say your AI gains enough complexity for emergent sentience? At what point do you even realize that your AI is truly sentient instead of just mimicking? What does that even mean? Is Data a person??
ANYWAY. They don't even talk about this stuff in the book. So 3 stars for the book by itself, and an extra star for all that stuff it made me think about.
This book was really interesting. Throughout I was struck with the difficulties of using the correct pronouns and currently accepted terminology when writing about one of the first documented trans man who underwent hormone treatment as well as surgery to pass. In the western world, at least, I don't know much about the history of trans people in other areas of the world! An interesting biography of an interesting man.
This book was hilarious. Did you know that in heaven - Oh sorry, I mean, the Other Side - carnivores and their prey hang out together on lost continents and speak to each other telepathically? Also there are unicorns. It's always the same balmy temperature and snow is warm and fluffy! The penguins don't mind. Sylvia Browne knows because they spoke to her in her mind while she was looking at the Other Side and they told her that it's all cool.
I just re-read this book for the first time since grade 7 because I watched the movie, which was pretty good. And I remember really liking this book when I was kid. I guess it was the first dystopia that I read and it sort of blew my mind. I was worried that it wouldn't hold up, like Animorphs (though my love for that series will never diminish no matter how much I am unable to read it as an adult), but it's still really good. The writing is simple but not simplistic, and the story is dark and frightening without being inappropriate for younger readers. Still excellent!
This book was really entertaining. I don't know if I want to say it was good, necessarily, but it was entertaining. I liked it all the way to the end. Which was happy! And I'm so glad it was happy because really a story about a woman who wants to be a doctor and is also a lesbian in victorian times could probably end up really terrible. But I was so pleased to read about Lou and Eliza getting to live together and make out often. I got to this book from a recommendation in a bad review of [b:Ash 6472451 Ash Malinda Lo https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1286563960s/6472451.jpg 6550542], and now from a review here I'm moving on to [b:Fingersmith 45162 Fingersmith Sarah Waters https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327879025s/45162.jpg 1014113]. Here's hoping this chain of YA lesbian books never ends!
Everyone is comparing this book to [b:Gone Girl 21480930 Gone Girl Gillian Flynn https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1406511734s/21480930.jpg 13306276], so I feel like I need to read Gone Girl now, even though it's not something I would normally pick up.This book is also being compared to [b:The God of Carnage 3070605 The God of Carnage Yasmina Reza https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347752275s/3070605.jpg 3101619] (I've only seen the movie) which is pretty apt, in that it's the story of two couples coming together to talk about their kids, and it gets increasingly tense/weird. I wouldn't call The Dinner a farce, though. It also reminded me of [b:We Need to Talk About Kevin 80660 We Need to Talk About Kevin Lionel Shriver https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327865017s/80660.jpg 3106720] (again I've only seen the movie - but it's on my to-read list!).I hate all of the characters. Not one of them is sympathetic in any way except maybe Babette. I love the unreliable narrator. I was definitely on Paul's side at the beginning, and I loved how much I started to hate him as I learned more about him. He's kind of a Walter White that way.This book probably needs some suspension of disbelief, and I didn't necessarily like that Paul gave no details about his life - for example, what his mysterious mental illness was. To me, it seemed obvious that Paul is a psychopath, or else has a personality disorder like borderline, which can be treated with medication. Though, personality disorders can't be detected in utero, so I just pretended that in the universe of the book, they can be. Which was an easy suspension of belief for me, but may not be for others.it seemed like a mostly unnecessary tool.Other than those little things, this book was creepy and disturbing and I love that.
Why did I pick this book up?
The cover. I want a print of it on my wall.
Otherwise I'm not really sure...it was on my holds list and when it finally came in I couldn't fathom why I'd requested it in the first place. It must have been before I decided not to read any more high/faux-middle-ages fantasy.
Why did I put it down?
“Town criers, until recently solely the mouthpieces of the king, were now paid men–and, shockingly, occasionally women–in the employ of the High Councils and an increasing number of concerned citizens and merchant guilds.”
That line, coupled with the fact that I got 100 pages in and the only references to women were bawdy or referring to the old dragon. Who is currently the only female character. I know that female characters are introduced later, but they're still being introduced in a sexist world.
This is not a criticism of this book specifically. I enjoyed the politics talk and would probably have enjoyed this book more a couple years ago, but it's just the latest in the list of medieval fantasy I've read that is either sexist or set in a sexist world. Sorry sword-and-sorcery.
This is one of my favourite kids books ever and makes me want to do a book hacking program with some kids. I don't even know how I'd read this out loud but I want everyone to read it. Recommended to everyone who thinks that BUNNY BIRTHDAYS ARE BORING and could do with some DESTRUCTION
Also I love that on every page all the trees have their tops chopped off with a hand saw.