Matthew Groves
Station Eleven is my favorite book, so I was excited to read this new one from Emily St. John Mandel. When I heard that this book had a split timeline and multiple protagonists, I was especially optimistic since I believe she does that very well. Sea of Tranquility does that almost as well and is a tidy, quick, slightly surreal read.
It's pretty in the way that you would expect from her, and it's fun to see authors try things that are very different. This is one of the first books I've read that was written entirely in a Covid world, which shows up a lot. I've always thought I had one of the more surreal experiences of the early days of Covid since I read Station Eleven over Christmas of 2019 and it freaked me out to see its exact plotline start happening. But I'm sure it was much more surreal and terrifying for Emily Mandel since it likely felt like she wrote the pandemic into existence in some way... One of the characters here is an author who goes through a similar experience and I'm sure lots of those anecdotes came from her real-world experience with that. I also recently read Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr, which has a somewhat similar premise of multiple protagonists and timelines, and had a similar takeaway: it makes perfect sense that books written during the pandemic will be more surreal and confused about time and perspective. I wonder how future decades will look at the fiction from this era and what themes will stand out. (This book was more cohesive than Cloud Cuckoo Land, which felt like 3 separate novellas stitched together).
I thought the time travel aspects were clever and served the plot instead of being a distraction. She also follows the best logical approach of how time travel works and pulls things together into a pretty satisfying, slick ending that makes the pieces click together.
Not her best work, but still worth a read.
There's a lot to like in Cloud Cuckoo Land: the prose is just as pretty as you would expect from the author of “All the Light We Cannot See.” The characters are varied, charming, a bit morally gray at times, but easy to cheer for. The frame story is an ancient Greek fable that's hilarious and touching, and his love for storytelling and the power of books is tangible everywhere. And I learned a whole lot about the world of the Byzantine empire's final days before Constantinople fell to the Turks, which was a fascinating corner of world history I'd never come across before. In addition to that world, there's also a Korean War veteran from Idaho and a teenage boy living near him who becomes an environmental terrorist, plus a girl in a spaceship far in the future. Each of these settings is thoughtful and comes alive in Doerr's hands.
Cons:
There are still so many different things happening that, while it's never exactly hard to keep track of, it's still a bit disorienting/disjointed. (Although the two young girls did bleed together in my mind a bit since I felt like they had similar personalities and a similar dilemma.) You end up having 5 main characters spread across 3.5 timelines, plus the framing story of the Greek myth. That's a LOT of balls in the air at once. Although the themes of the framing story generally hold them together, and there's lots of overlapping symbolism, at the end of the day I felt like they were loosely connected novellas instead of a cohesive story. Some books are able to make that multifaceted of a plot fit together as tightly and thoughtfully as a jigsaw puzzle (Station Eleven in particular comes to mind).
(As a final aside on the ‘plus' side, this book has a good amount of similarities in its goals to “The Starless Sea” by Erin Morgenstern, but this one's much, much better. So if you were ever thinking of reading Starless Sea, read this one instead)
Binti is very creative and thoughtful, but it also annoyed me and I wish I only ready the first novella instead of the full trilogy.
Pros:
I really like Nnedi Okorafor as a person. I first heard her talking about sci-fi and imagination with Br. Guy Consolmagno (the Vatican's top astronomer), and her vision and creativity struck me. Those attributes show in Binti abundantly: the wildly different alien species, the technology and travel, it's all a brilliant kaleidoscope of ideas. It's very easy to cheer for the protagonist. The Binti trilogy is also very thoughtful about the complexities of interactions between different species and human prejudice. I read these novellas because I'm trying to stretch myself a bit, and these definitely fit the bill.
Cons:
As is perhaps inevitable with trying to stretch myself with new material (my cultural background is wildly different from the Nigerian-American Ms. Okorafor), I found Binti to be SUPER weird. A character genetically fuses with other species/races not once, not twice, but three times during the plot. There are a LOT of features about this future world that are not explained at all and are just accepted in passing; some of these are fine and comprehensible, like a type of meditation they call “treeing.” But characters can apparently summon electric currents by thinking really hard about math equations, talk to animals, and all sorts of other oddities. Ideally, a reader would be so enchanted by the story that these would be trivial details that you accept in stride, but I was never quite “into” the story enough to avoid being irked every time one of them popped up.
The author also had a habit of writing oddly clipped sentences sometimes that drove me nuts.
I'm only a moderate fan of John Green's fiction, so I was delighted to find how much I like his nonfiction essays. The book is a collection of short studies on a particular topic of our human-centered planet, ranging from the best of what humanity has to offer, to the mundane and bad.
Green trained to be a pastor, and you can tell: he has an earnest love for so many of the wonders of our world, and some of his feel like sermons. He has a delicate balance between seeing all of the bad things that have come with humanity's rise on planet earth and critiquing them, while still being present to and in love with the world. It reminds me of the old Discovery Channel commercial, “Boom de yada,” about the great things on planet earth. But he never makes it feel like a silver lining, and never shies away from exploring the terrible things we are losing in our new world, from extinctions to social connections. He's at times hilarious, vulnerable, heartbreaking, and full of hope. Highly recommended. Many of these are available on the podcast of the same name, if you want to try them out.
As someone who's not really a “theater person,” I learned a lot and really appreciated this book. I didn't realize until I got started how much an actor's perspective could really open up some Biblical narratives. If you're portraying Jesus/Judas/etc for an audience, you have to embody the character as well as you can, and it leads you to ask all kinds of fascinating questions about your character's motives, priorities, and inner turmoil. It makes for great Bible study, and it fits in well with the Jesuits' “Ignatian Contemplation” of imagining yourself within a Bible story to better understand it.
A fairly quick read, but thoughtful and warm. Recommended if you like, theater, the New Testament, or James Martin.
Sedaris is funny, poignant, and surprisingly thoughtful about death and aging. And: you know how we all have those quick thoughts sometimes that are harsh and judgey, and we don't say them? Sedaris has a way of conveying them in writing that feels relatable instead of terrible. Great collection of short stories.
Pros: more incorporation of nature imagery and themes than I remembered.
This is the kind of thing that I think is fun, and that more authors should do: short stories / novellas set in their world that give the advantages of exploring a little bit more or answering reader questions without getting caught up in the weight of a full new plot.
There are a few moments of magic and beauty that I'm sure are what he was going for, in the vein of Name of the Wind.
Cons: While I loved these books in high school and there's a bit of a nostalgia factor, I'm a different reader now. I find his writing and especially his dialogue so very stilted that it definitely takes me out of the world and the plot. And the breadth of other things I've read make it harder to recommend this series, when I now have so many other works that are more interesting and have a shorter page count. But I'll always be grateful to CP for making my younger self dream about books and writing.
Creative, thought-provoking, stark, and a great example of why sci-fi/fantasy/“speculative fiction” needs more diverse voices. Essentially an extended look at the thought, “if you'd be happy to go back in American history and live there, you're probably a white man.” Did feel like it had more premise than plot, although I know the disjointed nature of it was intentional. Butler is great, I'm excited to read more
I sympathize with the author: she's written a compelling world with characters people are fond of, and she's a writer: of course she'll keep writing. I cared enough about the characters to read this, and there were a few good twists, but overall I can't help feeling like there aren't enough new ideas to justify this size of book. Perhaps her level of success means her editors can't be as strict, but these books keep getting longer without getting better. Cutting a handful of YA cliches and about 200 pages would have improved this duology a lot. I still love the Six of Crows duo, so fingers crossed for the future...
I had an absolute blast reading this book. If you have any interest in sci-fi, science, outer space, alien life, or humanity's precarious place in the stars, I think you'll find a lot to like here.
I don't want to say too much since part of the plot is discovering things alongside the character as his memories return, but the same scrappy, warmhearted, optimistic “we'll science a way out of this problem” from The Martian is on full display here, and is a joy from start to finish. Highly recommended.
I care enough about these characters to read about them and there are some good ideas here:
Humanizing Zoya's backstory
Nikolai's real and metaphorical demons
Nina's bitter grief and quest across cultures
People unexpectedly worshiping the Darkling
Perhaps most of all, I really like what Brandon Sanderson in Mistborn calls “What happens after the good guys win.” Oftentimes we gloss over that in an epilogue, so I like the politicking here and thought the intrigue in the capital was a good subplot.
But overall, I confess I was pretty bored. It felt like the plot got tripped up around the time they went into the sand world, and the momentum never quite recovered. After the frantically enjoyable pacing of Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom (which both transcend the top tier of YA for me, nearing the HP/His Dark Materials/Mistborn quality tier), I'm just a little bummed to see a much more ho-hum YA entry here.
I had a great time with Six of Crows. Like many people, I thought it was the most fun of the Shadow and Bone books, and I would recommend it to anyone. Reading the original trilogy is recommended but not required, and it could be a standalone “heist story” even if you didn't really like the originals. It feels a bit like Oceans Eleven or the first Mistborn with a solidly character-driven plot.
I really appreciated the variety and depth of the characters. From reading the original trilogy you have a few conceptions/stereotypes about the various peoples, but this feels like a fully cosmopolitan book, which is fitting for its trader city setting. I also appreciate/respect that she wasn't just showing off different in-world cultures for the sake of vague “worldbuilding,” but that the characters' backgrounds strongly shape their motives. She shows two different characters who are earnestly but not cartoonishly patriotic for their own countries, and I thought their Romeo/Juliet dynamic was very good and a strong step up from most YA.
Different characters have different things to bond over or fight about, and it truly drives the plot and their motives. Having tension within the group AND against other groups (inter-and intra-) makes all of the decisions matter and truly kept me guessing; I had no idea what would happen. There were lots of little twists, and a few really good ones.
Have fun!
SPOILERS
One of the things I think sets this world above most YA is how Bardugo introduces a few moral shades of gray. I appreciated the humanization of the Darkling through his past, but also by showing how a few of his loyal supporters thought he was making the hard but right decision. Feels like most YA just leaves it at “don't do bad things,” but I liked how the darkling's argument was “war is a cycle of suffering and it must be stopped. No matter how much suffering I cause in this moment, it will be worth it to make stability and end the war.” I don't 100% agree with that claim, but at least he's making some kind of argument that you can entertain. (Reminds me of Kuvira, my favorite Avatar villain).
I liked the twist that doing “the big magical thing” was actually her losing her powers and diffusing them to the “regular” people. I appreciated the running commentary about the special/ordinary divide, and how Alina's sainthood played into that. (And the sainthood elements pulled from Eastern Orthodox Christianity remains one of the neatest twists I've seen in place-based fantasy)
I will say I thought the resurrection of Mal disappointed me. Not just because he survived, but because it made no sense at all in the rules of the world. I don't need an encyclopedia of the world's magic system, but authors have to know that if they introduce an entirely new magical trick during a pivotal moment, it's going to feel like a deus ex machina.
On the whole, glad I read the trilogy, I'd put it above Hunger Games but below Golden Compass and perhaps Mistborn.
With just a few examples of the sequel slump, I overall thought Siege and Storm tried a few new things that worked. If you liked Shadow and Bone, you'll like this and can stop reading.
SPOILERS for both books 1 and 2 below:
Cons:
Especially towards the beginning, I felt a bit of a bait-and-switch repetitiveness, almost a “Mario, your princess is in another castle!” A few examples: she runs away with Mal but the Darkling catches her; she barely escapes the Darkling during a battle in a wasteland and leaves him for dead; and there's a magical creature she needs to amp up her powers. It feels a little bit repetitive, but more importantly it cheapens the impact of the end of the last book. Kind of like the problem with Marvel movies: it's the “magical item/villain to end them all!” ... until the next movie comes along. We also go to the trouble of setting up a whole other country, but only spend a chapter or two there before going straight back to where we started. The whole first section just left me feeling like, “Wait, haven't we just been here and done this?” It's a real shame the beginning is so flat, because...
Pros:
There's a lot to like in this book once it opens up a bit. I really appreciated the introduction of the prince as a third strong character in the politics, providing some balance to the Darkling. It evens the power struggle and makes Alina's decisions more complex and interesting. We also see a lot more consequences of those decisions this time around. I did appreciate the way the last book handled her mercy towards the stag as a “more than one way to possess a life,” but I also would have really respected the ending if she just left it unfixed: you should have made the hard decision to kill the stag, and now you blew it and the world is ruined. Sometimes we have to make harsh choices for the best. Not a very YA approach, but I like when books subvert expectations. Book 2, on the other hand, did subvert those expectations. Things are going well and you have a feeling like they can mayyyyybe just pull it off, but instead it's a disaster. For the whole series, I've been looking at the monarchy through a modern lens and thinking how unstable it is to have a feeble old creep and his idiot showboy son running the country, and apparently Leigh Bardugo agrees... having a clueless party boy run your foreign policy would have real consequences in the real world, and it sure does in book 2. Similar to the original Star Wars trilogy's middle film Empire Strikes Back, I respect the author for including a large helping of reality and ending on a note of defeat.
On the whole, this series feels like it could end up in the upper end of the genre for me, alongside Mistborn or the Golden Compass. We'll see!
Shadow and Bone impressed me throughout, and I'm very glad I gave it a chance. Overall, on the YA quality spectrum from Twilight on the low end to Harry Potter on the high end, this one rates somewhere in the “very good to excellent” range between Hunger Games and HP.
Pros: Truly unique setting, in a Russian-inspired landscape. So many books in this vein just choose a vaguely European/British setup, so I was very happy to see something different. This also lends itself well to a fascinating overlap between the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition of Russia and the book's fantasy elements, which is unlike anything I've ever come across and I hope gets more attention in future books.
There's also a good use of controlled information (reminiscent of Brandon Sanderson a bit), as well as thoughtful interactions with questions of mercy and necessary evils. It's no “Game of Thrones,” but the villain(s) here have a lot of motivations to pull from, and readers can genuinely see why some people support the “bad guy.” That's always welcome, especially in books for this age group. I'll keep reading for sure.
Cons: ?
I picked this up because it's popular amongst my students, and I was pleasantly surprised by most of it. The book has several good twists and throws together elements of cat-and-mouse ship chases (like Master and Commander), space horror (Sunshine, Alien), and even a dash of zombie-like survival adrenaline (28 Days Later, World War Z). There's also a good decision to make the ship's AI its own, thoughtful character, and I thought the authors handled machine decision-making very well. There's also a gorgeous, thoughtful approach to the visual design process, with some of the most creative mixture of text and graphics I've ever come across. There's a lot to like here.
It's also primarily aimed at high schoolers, so the teen romance and some of the tone is very YA, but fair enough.
Beautiful, thoughtful, heartfelt. Does so many different things well without feeling scattered: childhood journals, science, religion, immigration, addiction. As a Christian and a scientist, I was left teary-eyed by some of her descriptions about how nature is charged with wonder. Highly recommended.
I've been a casual fan of Trevor Noah for a while, and he's always seemed a little more thoughtful than some of the other late night hosts (his answer to an audience question about racial reparations is the best short answer I've seen on the topic, and he shows his depth on Israel-Palestine as well.) This book shows his abundant empathy for people in difficult situations, as well as being heartfelt and quite funny in places. I learned a lot about apartheid, and he spends a lot of time exploring the very human situations that result from racially biased systems and poverty. You'll laugh a lot, learn a lot, and have a newfound respect for him. Highly recommended.
