Matt

It’s been a while since I had the opportunity to sink my teeth into a new fantasy series with a ton of books. That used to be my favorite type of book but nowadays seeing a series with a book number higher than I can count on one hand is intimidating. However everything I heard about Will Wight’s Cradle series suggested it was one that I would love, so I dove in with a mix of excitement and nostalgia and I’m so glad I did. I had the pleasure of listening to this as an audiobook narrated by Travis Baldree and I think he did a fantastic job with it. He has a great way of making even the narration sections really interesting and he puts a lot of emphasis exactly where it needs to be. I also think he’s genuinely good at voicing female characters. Oftentimes when male narrators voice female characters the result is a caricature of a female voice but Baldree avoids that and makes the female characters sound like actual people. Combine that with really strong world-building and excellent fight choreography from Wight and you have a really enjoyable experience. I can’t wait to see where Wight and Baldree take me next.

There are two definitive things I can say about this book. The first is that it’s really weird. The second is that I absolutely love it. It takes a really special type of writer to do what Gunty does here. She manages to pretty effortlessly weave thick sections of social commentary with short vignettes about bizarre situations with cartoonish drawings with small slice of life stories. You could make the argument that the way the book goes back and forth in time and across multiple characters makes it disjointed but I really think it works. Every character feels impactful. Every detail feels purposeful. Every setting feels truly realized. Even the things that are ostensibly out of place aren’t. This is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read as well as one of the saddest and yet I didn’t feel any sense of tonal whiplash throughout. I really can’t help but admire what Gunty was able to do within these 396 pages. She’s a legitimate master of her craft and she deserves all the praise in the world for this book. I don’t throw out the word masterpiece too lightly but I really think this book has earned that title. Bravo Tess Gunty.

  This one is going to be short because I have so little to say about it.  This isn't a bad book, it's just one that made me feel nothing.  I think House of Rain would be very interesting if it were a TV series instead of a book but archeology is just... not an easy thing to write about in a captivating way.  That's all I really have to say about it.  Sorry Mr. Childs. 

  For most of the books I read, how I feel about the book matches with the quality of its writing.  In other words I like well-written books and don't like poorly-written books.  But every now a book comes along that throw these two factors out of alignment.  Wolf Hall is one of those books.    Let's start with the good.  Wolf Hall is very well-researched and impeccably detailed.  Mantel clearly knows this era of history inside and out.  Through this knowledge she is able to make 1500s England come to life in a marvelous way.  This knowledge also allows her to make these historical figures feel totally alive.  This is not an easy task but Mantel accomplishes it spectacularly throughout Wolf Hall.    In addition to her historical chops, Mantel is a damn good writer and it shows.  Her characters pop, her descriptions are vivid and everything is quite well-paced (a major feat for a book that is over 500 pages).  There are a whole lot of words in this book and Mantel is able to make each one of them feel meaningful.  It is easy for a historical drama to get a bit superfluous but I feel like Mantel avoids that pitfall.    And yet despite all my praise... I just don't care.  This is a well-written, well-researched book that inspired exactly zero emotion out of me whatsoever.   I like to have emotions when I read and this book didn't give me them.  I feel like I should say more but it's hard to write about a book that didn't make me feel anything.  I will still read Wolf Hall's sequels as I have heard they are better, but I can't say I'm looking forward to them. 

 Sometimes a book enters your life not because you seek it out, but because some cosmological force made it seek you out.    I have been going through a major career/life crisis over the past few months.  With this crisis has come a lot of regrets.  Regrets about not studying hard enough.  About not being happy enough.  About not being brave enough.  About not having things figured out.  About roughly anything that could possibly come to mind.  One thing that I have never regretted is my love of reading.  Reading has always been a form of escape for me.  It's why fantasy and sci-fi are my favorite genres.  It is so easy to escape into the world of a good fantasy or sci-fi novel and experience a life with no regrets.  But life isn't about that.     I say all of this as a very lofty preamble to me randomly picking up The Midnight Library and thinking ‘yeah I'll give this a shot' with minimal enthusiasm.  This is not my genre.  Under the vast majority of circumstances I never would have touched this.  But I decided to for some reason... and devoured the entire thing in a day.        The Midnight Library tells the story of Nora Seed, a depressed woman who decides to kill herself at midnight one night due to feeling like her life is worthless.  While she is in a state of limbo, she enters the titular Midnight Library, a place that allows her to go into any alternate life she may have lived had she made any different choice.  Some of these lives are radically different, others are very similar to her current life.  Along the way she finds out that she wants to live in her ‘root life' and forces herself into consciousness in the ‘real world' and saves herself from her own suicide attempt.    Writing this all out makes the book sound very cheesy and predictable.  I'm sure if I were to go up to 100 random people and ask ‘how do you think a book where a woman is given the opportunity to choose between any other life she could have lived and the one she currently has would end' and all 100 people would say ‘she chooses her current life because she discovers the joy of her current life'.  It's not exactly the hardest plot to figure out.     But... this book just worked for me on this day.  One truly magical thing about reading is that you can read the same book at various points in your life and those same words can hit you totally differently.  A Separate Peace by John Knowles is one of my all-time favorite books, but if I had read it for the first time at 24 instead of 14 I doubt that'd be the case.  On a similar note, had I read The Midnight Library at 14 I probably wouldn't have liked it.  But this book is exactly what I needed right now.  This is one that is going to stick with me forever.  Thank you Matt Haig. 

  I've read a pretty good amount of novels that were originally written in Chinese and translated into English.  Sometimes they can be awkward due to how different the languages are.  This is especially true for wuxia novels, as in the original Chinese they use poetic and elegant terms for fighting moves and names that do not translate in a smooth way.  However I do think that this book, the first in a series of eight print versions of a web novel, does not suffer from the same translation issues that a lot of wuxia novels do.  This is because the translators didn't even try to translate the names.  It's amazing how natural the book feels to read as a result of this decision.  Sometimes less is more when it comes to translation and this book shows that.  
Good translation aside, this book is a damn good time!  It tells the story of Xianle, a former prince who becomes a god before being kicked out from heaven, then repeating this process before finally sticking as a god on his third ascension.  The book mostly focuses on his adventures after ascending for the third time and I think that's a smart decision.  We don't need to linger on Xianle's past too much.  During his adventures he encounters a number of fun situations and meets some very interesting figures.  One thing that I like about the book is how everything ties together.  Minute details mentioned in one chapter often become very relevant a few chapters later.  This attribute rewards those who read carefully while also allowing for fun surprises for those who don't.  While the twist of ‘this character was actually this one in disguise' does wear out a bit by the end I still had a really fun time reading it and I look forward to reading more of the story in future installments.
 

  Sometimes I don't judge books by their covers, I judge them by their titles.  When I read the name of this book I was immediately interested and wanted to pick it up.  390 pages later, I'm glad I did.    The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (which I'll refer to as Seven Moons from this point on) is a really interesting book that fits nicely into multiple genres.  It is at times a historical fiction book about the Sri Lankan civil war that took place between 1983 and 2009.  At other times it is a love story between two men in a society that does not want to accept their love.  At other times still it is a mystery thriller with the focus being Almeida's murder.  And most of all it is speculative fiction that attempts to answer life's greatest question: what happens to us after we die?  Note how I said in the first paragraph that this book is only 390 pages and yet all the plots I just talked about get enough focus that I feel each story wraps up nicely.  This is not an easy feat.  Balancing these genres alone is the mark of a skilled writer, let alone managing them in such a way that each genre can feel fulfilled in under 400 pages.     Karunatilaka really shows himself to be an incredibly talented writer here.  Not only is his command of narrative and pacing strong, he just paints beautiful pictures with his words as his brush.  His protagonist Maali Almeida is a photographer by trade and as such this is a book that is heavy on imagery.  Karunatilaka is spectacular at painting scenes of horrific bloodshed as well as those of passionate love.  His writing is just so vivid in a way that makes me feel like I'm in each of his settings.    This is an excellent book by a really strong writer and I can't recommend it enough. 

  I spent a lot of my review of A Deadly Education (this book's predecessor) talking about how good the book felt and looked.  I will start out this review by saying that everything I said there regarding the aesthetics and feel of A Deadly Education holds for The Last Graduate.  The book looks amazing and feels wonderful to read on a purely physical sense.  With that out of the way let's get into the contents of The Last Graduate.    While the physical quality of The Last Graduate matches its predecessor, the actual text does not.  It's still a good book that will treat any fans of the first, but it doesn't feel like a true groundbreaking work the way the first book did.  If I had to point out one failure in The Last Graduate, it's that it doesn't introduce enough new things to justify its existence as a standalone novel.  Sequels can sometimes be hard to write because the intrigue of exploring a new world isn't there for a sequel the way it is for the first book in a series.  Typically authors get around this issue by simply expanding upon the ideas and concepts introduced in the first book.  The Last Graduate does not use this method nearly enough to keep the book fresh.  Like A Deadly Education, The Last Graduate takes place entirely within The Scholomance.  The Scholomance remains an awesome setting for a book, but it's a lot less intriguing when you know all about it.  Part of what made A Deadly Education so fun was learning about the weird tricks of the Scholomance.  This feeling of excitement naturally doesn't exist to nearly the same degree here.     I don't mean to make it sound like The Last Graduate is totally pointless.  Many plot threads from its predecessor are picked up and furthered in satisfying ways.  The main thing I'm talking about here is the El-Orion relationship, but plenty of other relationships are further explored.  We also see some legitimate growth from El, which is very fun to see.  The final chapters are also legitimately breathtaking up until the very last sentence (which perfectly sets up the conclusion of the trilogy).  There's definitely some good stuff here.    Ultimately The Last Graduate fails to live up to the lofty expectations set by its predecessor.  It's far from a bad book, it just left me wanting for more. 

  As you can surmise by its name, this is the second part of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu's Heaven Official's Blessing series.  Calling it a sequel isn't quite accurate as this was originally published online as one massive web novel consisting of a lot of chapters.  When it was published in paperback it was split into eight separate installments.  This means that each book does not tell one cohesive story, at least in theory.  In practice I found that Volume 2 totally made sense as one book.  It didn't feel weird jumping in and it didn't end with me feeling awkward about leaving the story at that point.  The chapters presented in this volume fit together nicely and progress the overall plot very well.  We see what happens immediately following the events of Volume 1 while also learning more details about Xie Lian's past.  When reviewing Volume 1 I said that we didn't need to linger on his backstory too much, but the chapters spent looking at him before he first ascended are quite strong and certainly have a place within the book.  Along with strong translating and really good initial writing, everything about Heaven Official's Blessing Volume 2 is a really good time and I'm quite excited to pick up more volumes.  
 

  I really liked this one.  There were about a million different directions Lackey could have gone in with the end of Magic's Pawn but I'm glad she chose this one in particular.  Magic's Promise doesn't pick up right after the end of its predecessor, instead it takes us 13 years into the future.  Vanyel is no longer a love-stricken teenager, he's now a 28-year old full blown Herald-Mage who has seen and done some insane shit since he was 15.  We get bits and pieces as to what he's done but we aren't directly told all of it, which is a smart decision in my opinion.  All we need to know is that Vanyel has been worn down by his duties and he is exhausted.  He still hasn't totally gotten over the loss of Tylandel and you can feel his pain every time he's mentioned.  Vanyel's mental state is the main focus of the book and he is absolutely a compelling-enough protagonist to pull it off.     As for other new things, there are quite a few of them in Promise.  The cast gets expanded, the existing cast gets developed and we see a ton of different locations, making Valdemar feel like a very real, alive place.  I know that Lackey has written a ton of books set in Valdemar and you can tell she just has such a control of this world.  The expanded cast also helps to separate this book from Pawn.  Tashir and Medren are the obvious stand-outs here as characters who exist on their own while also adding a lot to Vanyel.  But the best part about this book has to be the development of Jervis and Withen.  In Pawn they're pretty cartoonishly evil, but Lackey makes them so much more sympathetic here.  Their turnarounds aren't especially subtle but they're still quite heartwarming.    All in all this is a really strong sequel and I look forward to finishing the trilogy with Magic's Price. 

  This conclusion to R.F. Kuang's Poppy War trilogy is as brilliant as it is crushing.  As with all my reviews for final books in a series, I'll start by talking about the book itself before talking about the trilogy as a whole but I just wanted to start out by saying that.    The Burning God is a book that does not shy away from the brutality of war and its effects on people.  Everyone is a villain here.  Everyone commits horrible acts.  Nobody leaves unscathed.  I have yet to read a fantasy book quite like this where war is so agonizingly dissected.  Even the victories feel like defeats and the defeats feel soul-crushing.  It is a true testament to Kuang's writing that I, someone with exactly zero experience with anything like war, was able to feel every single emotion that Rin and co felt throughout this book.  This is done mostly through expert character-work.  Kuang takes full advantage of the two books prior to this and paints the relationships between allies, adversaries and everything in between in excruciating detail.  With the way I'm writing it may sound like I didn't like reading this book but I really did.  It is far from an easy read but the writing quality is so high that I couldn't put it down.  It's a perfectly fitting conclusion for this trilogy and definitely the best book Kuang had written up to this point.    Overall I would consider The Poppy War trilogy one of the best fantasy trilogies I've ever read.  It is just about perfect in every way.  Just about everything you could want in a fantasy series is here, from strong world-building to complex characters to fully realized magic systems etc.  Kuang combines her obvious intelligence and background with WWII China with some visceral writing to make this series explode off the page.  This is the fourth book by Kuang that I've read in the past few months and I cannot get enough of her writing.  She is an undeniable talent and this series is a masterpiece because of that.  I seriously can't say enough good things about this trilogy.  I'm in awe of it and I feel genuinely privileged that I got to read it.  

 It's rare that I read a book and think ‘this is perfect' but I had that thought multiple times while reading this masterpiece by Kazuo Ishiguro.  I don't think there's a single misplaced word in the entire book.  Everything from the characters to the prose to the plot to the themes is just... immaculate.  And these individual components interweave to form a truly outstanding tale about love and humanity.    For me, a book's quality is most dependent on its characters and Klara's characters really form the backbone of this story.  There aren't very many characters here (for the majority of the book it's really only four of them: Klara, Josie, Mother and Rick) but each one is so real and well-written that I absolutely adore them.  Klara is a really excellent protagonist, and making the entire novel told from her POV is a great choice from Ishiguro.  She's written in a way that makes it clear she's not quite human, but she's still able to make legitimate observations on her subjects.  This is done while making her lovable and relatable all the same.  She's certainly one of my favorite protagonists I've read in recent memory.  Josie, Mother and Rick are also wonderfully complex for how short the book is, with Mother in particular standing out as being exceptionally well-written.  There are a few supporting characters that also leave their mark on the story in their own way.  This is just a wonderful cast of characters that allows the book to explore its ambitious themes with ease.    Speaking of those themes, I applaud Ishiguro for not being afraid to ask deep questions in a story that is quite small in scope.  For most of the novel, Ishiguro uses Klara merely to observe her surroundings.  The story is merely being told through Klara's eyes without any meaningful commentary.  This shifts about 2/3 through the book when other characters start trying to make Klara human, and this is when the book becomes truly spectacular.  Through the last 1/3 of the book, Ishiguro asks what it means to be human and what the metaphorical heart really does.  He brings up these themes in a quite natural way that leads the readers to their own conclusion rather than forcing any specific perspective.    Klara and the Sun is a beautifully-written book that does everything it sets out to do and so much more.  I can say without hesitation that it's one of my favorite books of all time. 

  Every now and then you read a book that is difficult to critique and review.  Sometimes it's because the book exists outside of genre.  At other times it's because the book is too odd to really analyze.  And at other times it's because the book is so personal that it feels less like a piece of literature and more like an insight into a person's soul, and it kind of feels wrong to critique and review a person's soul.  Where Reasons End is firmly one of those books.  With that said I'll still do my best to talk about this remarkable work.    Where Reasons End is a series of 16 short chapters that detail conversations between the narrator and her 16-year-old son who recently committed suicide.  On the surface that makes the book sound like a fantasy novel, but there is nothing fantasy-like about this book.  It's unclear whether or not this narrator is hallucinating these conversations but it almost doesn't matter.  What is important is that she certainly feels like she's having these conversations and they appear to have an impact on her.  As you can guess, Where Reasons End is not a happy book.  You can feel the narrator trying to cope with her loss as she talks to her son, who seems to be indifferent to his mother's suffering.  They talk about his life before his suicide, her life as it happened and how she imagines her life will be afterwards.  But (at least for me) this book doesn't feel like a knife driven into my chest over and over again.  It feels more like I'm being beaten by a dull hammer repeatedly (emotionally of course).  I feel like that's what Li was going for.  Rarely have I seen a book so accurately depict depression.  Depression is not a feeling of constant overwhelming sadness.  It often feels like a constant wave of mind-numbing apathy towards your existence and surroundings.  Yes there are some particularly rough moments but a lot of depression is a general lack of feeling.  Li is able to convey her narrator's emotional state in a brutal and totally believable fashion.     Li's ability to display her narrator's emotions in a convincing fashion isn't surprising given her own back story.  Just like the narrator in this book, Li lost her 16-year-old son to suicide.  This adds a whole extra layer to just how sad this book is.  In many ways Where Reason Ends feels like a mother's attempt at processing her own grief.  There is no clear point where it's the narrator talking or Li herself talking.  You can feel Li herself asking questions about why her son killed himself and if she could have done anything differently to stop it.  It's no wonder then that this book doesn't really end with any resolution.  The grief will always be there for Li and her narrator.  How can it not?    Where Reasons End is a book that feels outside the realm of criticism and analysis, but for my money it's pretty stellar and a genuinely incredible work of literature. 

 This is my first Agatha Christie novel and to say I had fun with it is an understatement.  It's really hard to talk about this book without spoilers but I will say that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a very well-constructed murder mystery that left me guessing up until the last moment.  Part of why it's fun is that the characters are all really interesting and suspicious in their own way.  You can see why anyone could be Roger Ackroyd's murderer and each piece of detail and dialogue leaves you thinking.  I am a lifelong consumer of fictional murder mystery media and part of the fun of consuming this type of content is figuring out why the creator would include certain details.  Christie is a master at this.  She leaves so many little nuggets of information sprinkled throughout the book that the reader has to decide which are relevant and which aren't.  As a result, I felt like I was playing along with the characters in the book.  While they were trying to figure out who the murderer was, I was trying to figure out what Christie was doing.  And yet I will admit that I was totally fooled.  The best mysteries are the ones in which you as a consumer feel like you got outsmarted by the creator in an honest way and Christie certainly got the better of me.  Every clue was laid out for me to piece the puzzle together but I didn't.  Well done Agatha, this is a classic for a reason.
 

Last year I read N.K. Jemisin's ‘Broken Earth' trilogy and was incredibly impressed.  They are some of my favorite fantasy books of all time and a big reason why was Jemisin's unique style and creative choices.  Naturally after reading them I wanted to check out more of Jemisin's work.  Her ‘Inheritance' trilogy was a natural place to go, and thus I decided to read The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, the first book in that series.    I do not think that this book is as good as any of the entries into the ‘Broken Earth' trilogy.  This is her debut novel and you can tell.  It feels like Jemisin isn't quite as confident in herself and her writing feels a bit less refined than it does later.  With that said, this is still an excellent fantasy book that shows off some of the talent and potential that would be fully realized in her second trilogy.     What stands out in particular is just how creative Jemisin is.  Her settings are always really unique and set up some truly fascinating scenarios.  Here, we go to a city called Sky that is above everything (a sharp contrast to the ‘Broken Earth' trilogy, which takes place exclusively on the ground).  Sky serves as the capital of the world and is led by a family that has control over 100,000 gods.  This is an interesting idea that is backed up by some really strong world-building that allows the concept to truly make sense.  While I do think that the plot of this book is a bit more convoluted than Jemisin's future work, everything makes enough sense that I don't get lost in trying to follow the narrative.    Of course, a good world can only take you so far.  For a fantasy book to be truly great, the characters that live in said world need to be interesting as well, and Jemisin delivers on this front as well.  Our protagonist Yeine is a really fun character to follow as she gets used to Sky and the politics that take place within it.  Making her somewhat of an outsider is a solid choice as it allows the reader to learn as she does.  Her supporting characters are also very captivating, none more so than the god Nahadoth, who is a true surprise in terms of just how complex and interesting he is.  The interactions between him and Yeine are the best parts of the book.  There really aren't any weak characters here.  Even the small ones make a good impression in their limited time on the page.     The world and characters combine to make a truly great book that shows how strong of a writer Jemisin was from the jump.  This book is exciting.  It's funny.  It's intriguing.  It's sexy.  It's captivating.  And above all, it's never boring.  I am very excited to read its follow-up The Broken Kingdoms. 

  I have been a basketball junkie my entire life.  Despite this, I haven't really read that many books about the subject until recently.  The ones I have read I have enjoyed quite a bit, so I've recently made an effort to look more into basketball literature, which naturally led me to this book, which has recently been adapted into a TV show.  And holy crap I'm glad I did.    The Showtime Lakers played in such a style that made watching them a joyous experience and this book elicits that same emotion.  Throughout the 400+ pages of this book, Pearlman takes the reader on something akin to a roller-coaster ride as we get to know the ins and outs of a truly interesting basketball team.  Sure this book tackles serious subjects (amongst them drug use, infidelity and mental health) but it moves at such a fast pace that even these detours into darker subjects don't ruin the fun vibes that this book just exudes.    The main strength of this book is just how well-researched it is.  Pearlman was able to get info about every remotely important (and some who don't even reach that level) figure in the Showtime lore and he uses that information to paint a very detailed picture of what life was like amongst these players.  The Showtime Lakers are amongst the most important teams in the mythos of the NBA and yet Pearlman is able to make all the key players feel very human.  These people often seem like mythological figures, but thanks to this book I feel like they're more demi-gods than actual gods.     If there's one criticism I have about the book it's that it kind of repeats itself at points.  The book is mostly told in chronological order and as such sometimes points that were important in one season are brought up again in another, but this can make the reading process a little bit less enjoyable.  I was aware of Kareem's standoffish nature the first few times I read about it, I don't need to hear about it again.     Other than that minor criticism I think this book is pretty perfect.  Pearlman deserves a lot of credit for how well this book works as both a definitive tome about the Lakers of the 1980s as well as just a super fun reading experience.  I eagerly look forward to reading more of his sports books. 

  I'm not sure how I feel about this book.  If I'm looking purely at the writing quality there are plenty of things that stand out as weak.  One of the first things a writer is told is “show, don't tell” but there is a whole ton of telling throughout this book.  Every moment of subtlety and complexity is explicitly fed to us as subtle and complex.  This is not a book that gives the reader a lot of freedom when it comes to interpretation or piecing together.  You are told how to feel at all moments.  This is not a quality I enjoy in any form of media and some of my least favorite pieces that I have ever consumed have shared this attribute with this book.
And yet... this book got me.  By the time I got to the last few chapters I found myself being emotionally invested in Evelyn's story and how it related to Monique.  I shed some legitimate tears in the last few chapters.  For a book to make me feel actual emotion is an undeniable positive and I cannot deny that Seven Husbands did have that effect on me.  For all of the flaws I find her writing to have here, Reid writes some characters that are very easy to latch on to and that is a quality that every successful writer should have as it is really easy to forgive certain issues if you like the people you are reading about.  I'm not going to rush to the bookstore to buy another one of her books, but I can't say I regret reading Seven Husbands.
 

 This is the second book in N.K. Jemisin's ‘Inheritance Trilogy' and the fifth book I've read by Jemisin overall.  Going into it I was expecting to once again have Yeine as a protagonist with a focus on what her and Nahodoth had been up to since the end of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.     To my surprise, Jemisin took a totally different route, giving us a totally new POV and an almost entirely new set of characters.  The result is interesting.   Second acts in trilogies are always very hard to pull off as they don't have the sense of wonder that exists in a first act while also not having the satisfaction of a conclusion that third acts naturally contain.  Jemisin somewhat avoids this by giving us a lot of new world-building that didn't exist in the first book, making it feel somewhat similar to a first book.  The main problem I have is that some beats are repeated here.  I feel like Itempas is just a less interesting Nahadoth, which really hurts the story as Itempas is so crucial to this book's emotional beats.  Oree is a strong POV and a really interesting character to follow, but I don't feel quite as enamored with her as I did with Yeine.  The supporting characters here are strong but outside of Dateh (who is legitimately fantastic and the best part of the book) I don't think they live up to the Arameri from A Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.  When you add all that up, what you get is less of a sequel and more of a weaker version of its predecessor.    With that said, I still like this book.  Jemisin is still an amazing writer and her sheer talent does make this plot and these characters work.  There are a lot of concepts introduced here that are super interesting and Jemisin weaves them into her world seamlessly.  The scenes where Oree does magic are great and this book does add a darker tinge that works quite well.  A Hundred Thousand Kingdoms isn't a bright, fun book by any stretch, but it feels more like dusk compared to The Broken Kingdoms' night.      I am very interested to see how Jemisin concludes this trilogy with The Kingdom of Gods.  I felt like she saved the best for last with ‘The Broken Earth' trilogy, and I have faith she'll do so again here. 

   Since really getting back into reading a few years ago my general reading style has stayed the same.  I can read pretty fast and I actively enjoy the process of doing so.  That's not to say that I skim, but I'm not the type of person to linger over a page or a sentence that really strikes me.  I just take a note of it and move on.  The Luminaries is the first book that I've read not only this year but this decade that has made me change that.  I read this book a lot slower than I normally do because each page and sentence is worth savoring.  For a book that's over 800 pages, that is a serious feat.    I'm not quite sure how to describe The Luminaries so this paragraph may be a bit unstructured.  It definitely has mysteries but it can't really be classified as a mystery novel.  It takes place in the past but it's not really historical fiction.  It has thrilling sections but I can't in good conscious call it a thriller.  It's just... a damn good novel.  The basic gist of it is that 12 people convene in a smoking room in a hotel during the New Zealand gold rush due to a few odd events that have happened over the past few weeks.  Over the course of the novel we learn a lot about each of these 12 as well as many others in this small mining town.  Catton explores her characters in such lush detail that I feel like I know all of them personally at this point.  As we learn more about the characters we also learn just what happened in order to set off the events of the novel.  It feels like Catton is really challenging her readers with the way she writes at points.  While many of the loose threads are explicitly tied up at various points throughout the novel, many others are finished in a more subtle way, rewarding those attentive enough to notice the tiniest of details in her writing.  One of my favorite things about reading is the feeling you get when you realize someone is truly amazing at the act of writing, and I felt that many times while reading The Luminaries.  She really makes writing seem like a beautiful art form with the way she crafts this book and the sentences within it.  I can't help but... be in awe of her talent.  If there is one criticism I have it's that I feel like the book starts out stronger than it finishes, but that is the tiniest of nits that I am picking.  I think the first 500 or so pages are a 10 out of 10 and the remaining 300 are a 9 out of 10.  Well done Eleanor Catton, your book is super fucking good.  

 This is the third book in Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy.  When reviewing The Broken Kingdoms (this one's predecessor), I talked about how that book felt more like a worse version of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (the trilogy's first entry).  I went into Kingdom of Gods hoping that Jemisin would not make the same mistake again.  I am pleased to announce that she very much didn't and instead created something that is quite spectacular.    My favorite thing about Jemisin as a writer has always been her creativity.  She just comes up with concepts and themes that I can't imagine thinking of on my own.  Her brain is absolutely amazing and it's a quality that makes her stand out even among other great fantasy writers.  This remains true here.  The Kingdom of Gods once again shifts the POV, this time to Sieh, a fairly prominent supporting character from the first couple of books.  We see as his world is completely turned upside down by the events in the first couple of books but more importantly one that happens early on here as he loses his immortality.  This is a neat concept that Jemisin explores in really cool ways while also setting up an apocalypse storyline that ultimately feels secondary to Sieh's personal character journey.  That's another thing that Jemisin does well.  Yes her creativity and world-building are top-notch, but they are supported by the characters that exist in the situations that Jemisin comes up with.  A lot of them are truly wonderful and Sieh is no exception.  It's hard to say more without spoiling it but after this book Sieh has cemented himself as one of my all-time favorite literature characters.  He's just so interesting and experiencing his thoughts is a wonderful experience that I'm glad Jemisin gave us the chance to enjoy.  It makes this book a great ride and I'm satisfied with this conclusion to the trilogy.    Now that that's out of the way I'll talk about what I think about The Inheritance trilogy as a whole.  It is not as good as Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy, but that's not saying much considering how good that trilogy is.   What the Inheritance trilogy is though is a very strong set of debut novels.  Jemisin isn't as refined here as she is in her other trilogy, but she shows off the characteristics that make her writing so good, namely creativity, strong characters and fleshed-out worldbuilding.  You can truly get lost in Jemisin's settings and I think that is a requirement for a high fantasy writer.  This is a really fun trilogy to read and I'm really glad I went back to it.  Up next for me in terms of her books is The Awakened Kingdom, a novella that was not originally part of the trilogy but was added to the omnibus version that I have.  After that I will check out her Dreamblood Duology.  I can't wait to see what she has in store there. 

  I've really been trying to diversify my reading, not just in terms of genre but in terms of format as well.  I've really delved into audiobooks recently and now I've read my first graphic novel.  I'm glad I did!    I think Persepolis is pretty perfect.  It tells the story of Marjane Satrapi as she grows up in war-torn Iran, studies abroad in Austria, returns to Iran before leaving her homeland once again.  Coming into this I thought graphic novels were relatively childish compared to novels but I think the format allows Satrapi to tell her story more effectively.  Even though this Persepolis is entirely in black and white, Satrapi manages to inject so much life into her illustrations and contrast each setting beautifully.  She fully takes advantage of her skill as a writer as well as her talent as an illustrator to make a comprehensive story that works on every level.  And I really mean that.  You can look at Persepolis as the story of two very different settings and cultures.  You can also look at it as one woman's coming-of-age story.  Or you can look at it as everything in between.  That's the beauty of Persepolis.  It doesn't fit into any one box.  It's funny.  It's depressing.  It's inquisitive.  It's stupid.  It's optimistic.  It's pessimistic.  It is all of these things and more and yet it never feels confused.  Satrapi deserves all the credit in the world for taking her remarkable life and putting it into a compact 330 pages (filled with pictures as well as words) without making anything feel rushed or incomplete.  Overall this is a fantastic first graphic novel for me and I look forward to trying out more. 

 After reading (and really enjoying) Jeff Pearlman's book Showtime I was told to pick up Three-Ring Circus.  Three-Ring Circus functions as a pseudo-sequel to Showtime.  While Showtime chronicles the joyous 1980s Los Angeles Lakers and their 5 titles, Three-Ring Circus covers the 1996-2004 Lakers, who won 3 titles of their own but in a far less exuberant fashion.  I knew about both of these times prior to reading Pearlman's respective books, so I was interested to see what would happen when he tackled a team whose mythology is far less celebrated.    As it turns out, Three-Ring Circus is still really good, if not quite as strong as its predecessor.  A number of the qualities that made Showtime such an excellent basketball book are present here as well.  Pearlman once again clearly researched his ass off to make this book.  There is no shortage of great quotes sprinkled throughout the book from just about everyone relevant to these Lakers.  Before starting this book, I had no opinion on Rick Fox, but now I know he's super smart and very insightful.  Pearlman is great at making figures like Fox memorable, and it's what makes his books so strong, both as historical documents and enjoyable reading experiences.  While Pearlman's books are very densely packed with information, he puts in enough style and humor that they don't feel like chores to get through by any stretch of the imagination.    One thing I want to commend Pearlman on in this book specifically is the tone.  While Showtime is a mostly happy ride exploring the nooks and crannies of one of the NBA's most beloved teams, Three-Ring Circus leaves little room for joy (the covers of the books show their respective tones well, with Showtime's featuring most of its figures in states of joy, while Three-Ring Circus has Shaq, Phil Jackson and Kobe making serious faces).  Even when these Lakers are doing well, it's clear that they are only one second away from a complete meltdown.  These Lakers were absolutely brilliant on the court but off the court they were a hot mess featuring a bunch of egos that could never truly co-exist.  There are no heroes in Three-Ring Circus.  Everyone seems to have some level of regret and frustration, and showing the remaining contempt in full detail is one of the book's great accomplishments.    With all that said, the book's handling of Kobe is the one thing that brings it a level below Showtime.  Coming into this book the one thing I knew about it was that Pearlman went too hard on Kobe.  That's not my problem with it.  Yes it is true that Kobe gets a ton of shit throughout this book from pretty much every person interviewed.  If this book has a villain it is undoubtedly him.  My problem is that in his villainy, Kobe... isn't interesting and is the least fleshed-out major character in either book.  Every now and then we hear something about how Kobe was socially awkward or something along those lines to draw a bit of sympathy but it's completely drowned out by passage after passage (some seemingly written by Pearlman alone with no outside insight) about how much of a selfish douchebag he was.  What's especially weird about this decision to make Kobe some two-dimensional asshole is that the book shies away from that portrayal at the end while Kobe is dealing with his rape charge.  If there's any time to make Kobe look bad, it's during that time, and yet that is Kobe appears to be the least-hatable.  I don't have a problem with making Kobe the antagonist to Shaq's protagonist.  I don't have a problem with printing dozens of negative comments about Kobe's demeanor and playstyle.  I don't even have a problem with portraying Kobe's 2004 season in a manner that isn't totally anti-Kobe.  But there needs to be something to connect all of these sections.  As it stands, the lack of depth in Kobe's portrayal for the majority of the book makes it slightly worse than it otherwise could have been.    Despite everything I said in that last paragraph I'm still a huge fan of Three-Ring Circus and think that every basketball fan should read it.  I will absolutely check out more of Pearlman's sports books in the future. 

While reading the reviews on the jacket of Babel, I noticed one word kept popping up: masterpiece.  That's a pretty weighty word to throw around.  To me a masterpiece is something that not only achieves everything that it sets out to do but redefines the field that it's in while doing so.  I was fairly skeptical that the bookwould actually live up to the expectations placed on it by that word.  After all, very few pieces of media in general could be considered masterpieces.  And yet now that I have finished reading it I have to say that Babel is in fact a masterpiece.  As with most great books    As with most works of this quality, I find it hard to describe just why Babel is so good, so I'll just start by going over the basics.  Babel initially appears to be a Harry Potter-esque book about a boy rescued from a rough situation at home and whisked away to a magical school where he meets new friends and has great adventures.  But it quickly becomes far more ambitious and serious.  I will give my first of many praises to author R.F. Kuang here for escalating the scope of her story in a way that feels natural.  She allows us to get used to the existing plot before expanding our horizons again and again, taking the reader across many topics without making them feel overwhelmed.  For a book that takes on issues such as racism, sexism, colonialism, war, labor unions while also inventing a new magic system, that is a genuinely remarkable feat.  While the transitions can sometimes feel a bit clunky, this is a pretty smooth 540+ pages and I don't think many writers have the sheer narrative skill to weave these difficult topics together in a way that doesn't feel forced.  What makes this work even better is that at no point does the book stop becoming a genuine joy to read.  There are times when I have read fantasy stories like this one that I feel bored or disinterested when bigger issues come into the fray.  Not all writers can make the reader face serious societal issues while also keeping them entertained, but Kuang has done that in spades here.    Of course, all of what I said above wouldn't mean anything if the characters and setting that exist within the narrative fail.  Luckily they don't.  One really smart choice that Kuang makes is that she keeps the list of important characters pretty small.  In a story of this scope it's easy to introduce a massive cast of characters but Kuang doesn't do that, instead opting to focus more on each individual character (this reminds me of what N.K. Jemisin did with her ‘Broken Earth' trilogy).  The protagonist Robin is an obvious standout here as someone we see grow into someone truly willing to be a martyr, even if for not the greatest of reasons.  Other highlights are Ramy, Letty and Victoire (who make up Robin's group of friends), Griffin (Robin's half-brother who introduces him to work as a vigilante) and Professor Lovell (Robin's father).  This is a seriously strong group of characters and they all feel tremendously realized.  Some of them meet tragic fates, but we get so much time with them beforehand that I don't find myself missing them after they depart the narrative.  That's not to mention Oxford, which feels like a character as well.  Kuang herself has studied at Oxford, so it's no wonder that she's able to make the college so vibrant and full of life (similar to how Leigh Bardugo has made Yale such a fun fantasy setting in her ‘Alex Stern' series).  Setting is such a crucial part of a fantasy novel, whether it be partially based on real life or totally fictional, and Kuang makes Oxford an extremely enjoyable place to transport oneself into.     I'm in genuine awe that this book is as good as it is.  Going into it I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy it but I've been completely blown away.  I can say without hesitation that it's one of the best books I've ever read, and I heavily look forward to checking out Kuang's ‘Poppy War' trilogy as a result.  She's made me a very big fan of her work. 

  It's weird.  I have nothing bad to say about this book.  In fact, I have a ton of good things to say about it.  It's a well-written story about interesting characters doing intriguing things.  McEwan is obviously a brilliant writer and his general knowledge of how to compose a tale is fully on display here.  The three main characters of Fiona, Jack and Adam all feel fleshed-out and you want to know what will happen to them throughout the book.  The basic premise is gripping and McEwan totally delivers on it.  You can write plenty of interesting papers about Fiona's journey throughout the book or debate whether Adam and his parents are in the right.     In every way a novel can be good, The Children Act is good.  But it's almost so good that it's boring?  It's like the perfect example of how to write a story.  If English professors around the world haven't picked this one for their syllabi I'd be absolutely floored.  This is not a bad thing at all, it's just... too textbook for me to really love it and feel enchanted by it. 

  On the surface, The City Game is just a book about a long-forgotten college basketball scandal.  In practice, it's a deep insight into New York City at the turn of the 1950's and how good people can be easily corrupted by money and so much more.    Matthew Goodman does a really great job of making a story that happened 70 years interesting today and he does it in a brilliantly entertaining way.  This book could be super boring, with drab descriptions of policework giving way to lifeless depictions of basketball games and so on until the story plays out, but Goodman's writing brings all of these events to life so that I could visualize every scene.  His detailing of the police and crime scenes are solid, but where he really shines is in the basketball scenes.  I've always found basketball to be a tough sport to translate to writing.  In a real life game things happen so fast and there's so much of it at the same time that it's hard to convey exactly how a play looks with just your words, but Goodman has found a way to make me feel as if I were in Madison Square Garden watching these players, and that is a genuine feat.     He does all of this while making each of the people involved in the scandal very human.  I feel like I know Floyd Lane and Ed Warner and Nat Holman and Bobby Sand and so on.  Goodman does not shy away from the misdeeds that marked many of these people for life, but he also gives us proper context to understand why they did the things they did.  In a world where college sports make more money than ever while still not paying the athletes themselves a dime, the moral quandaries the CCNY players face throughout the story remain more relevant than ever.  It's clear that Goodman did a ton of research into this story and it really paid off.     All in all this is a book that functions well as both a very entertaining story and an informative narrative with real moral conclusions.  I had a ton of fun reading it and I look forward to checking out more of Goodman's work in the future.