Book collage for October! Ended up having a pretty good spooky month: shipwreck, witches, vampire zombie thingies, and occult film Nazi spirits.
Tell the Wind and Fire, by Sarah Rees Brennan: Inspired by A Tale of Two Cities, Brennan creates two opposite cities, one imprisoned within the other: the Light, where inhabitants move in freedom and luxury; and the Dark, a desperate, resentful ghetto bounded by the Light’s iron rule. Lucie Manette was raised in the Dark but has managed to escape it, her comfortable position in the Light bought by careful PR and her relationship with Ethan, a scion of a powerful family. However, one day Ethan’s doppelganger Carwyn appears, and sets off a chain of events that upends Lucie’s carefully-crafted stability. I liked the inventiveness of the Light and Dark worlds and how their magic systems were entangled with one another, as well as the lack of a pure right and wrong; however, I think because Brennan felt the need to stay true to her source material, some of the plot elements seemed to come out of nowhere and a lot of Lucie’s actions felt unexplained. As for the magic system, usually I’m a fan of “show don’t tell” but in this case I think a little more explaining would have been welcome. Overall, even though the pacing was inconsistent, it was a good read; the ending was strong.
Threads that Bind, by Kika Hatzopoulou: Love this universe, which felt like a mashup of Percy Jackson demigods and Fonda Lee’s superpowered mobsters. In the half-sunken city of Alante, godly powers are carried recessively through family lines, expressing themselves once per generation. Io Ora is of the Moirae and the youngest of her sisters, able to see the threads of fate that people carry and (if she chooses) cut them; she elects to use her powers passively, scraping out a living as a PI. Greek mythology informs the powers of the main characters, but other mythologies are referenced as well. One day Io’s stakeout leads her into a murder case, and she finds herself reluctantly allying with mob queen Bianca and her second-in-command Edei, who (although he doesn’t know it) is Io’s soulmate. The pacing in this book is excellent, with Io and Edei slowly uncovering more and more aspects of the murder and getting further into danger, while around them magic and intrigue build higher. Bit of a cliffhanger ending into the next book.
Amazing Grace Adams, by Fran Littlewood: For Oz book club. I actually enjoyed this more than I thought I would at the beginning. Grace Adams is just trying to get a birthday cake to her daughter, and gets so fed up that she just abandons her car in the middle of a traffic jam, grabs the cake box, and sets off on foot. As the narration jumps back and forth in time, we get an increasingly clearer picture of the big and little tragedies that have driven Grace to where she is now. Her physical symptoms of menopause mingle with her accumulated traumas until she lashes out at every slight, even as she clings to her daughter’s cake as if it provides the answer to all her misfortunes. It sounds heavy but Grace’s narrative voice is biting, ironic, and hilarious; it is incredibly readable and lightens the overall tone.
Much Ado About Nada, by Uzma Jalaluddin: Uncomplicated rom-com, with extra Muslim family drama. Nada Syed claims to be perfectly happy with her life as a single engineer, but her parents and friends keep reminding her that she’s not getting any younger. Her best friend Haleema drags her to a Muslim convention on the pretext of meeting Haleema’s fiancee Zayn… but it turns out that Zayn’s brother Baz shares an emotional past with Nada. The story of Nada and Baz, both past and present, proceeds to unfold simultaneously for the reader; will Nada eventually find happiness? (This is a rom-com; make your own guesses.) This was a fun, light read; I also liked how the story was firmly rooted in the characters’ Muslim faith and set against the background of South Asian culture in Toronto.
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder, by David Grann: In 1740, HMS Wager left England on an ambitious mission: to chase down a Spanish galleon filled with treasure. Unfortunately, they were unable to navigate the unforgiving storms near Cape Horn and the survivors found themselves shipwrecked in a desolate area of southern Chile. Two years later, thirty emaciated men piloting a ramshackle craft landed on the coast of Brazil; they turned out to be survivors from the the Wager and were welcomed home with open arms. Six months after that, another trio of unlikely survivors arrived and upended everything by declaring that the first group had been mutineers, and thus deserving of hanging. Grann uses the sailors’ own accounts, as well as other contemporaneous writings, to paint a vivid picture of the time, from detailed descriptions of life at sea, to their harsh, forbidding existence on the Chilean coast, to the competing PR blitz that took over London when both groups reunited at home. Really riveting read. Initially recommended for Peril Book Club.
Immaculate, by Anna McGahan: At first when I began this book, I wasn’t sure I could continue; the situation was just so sad and so beautifully depicted. After her young daughter was diagnosed with cancer, narrator Frances separated from both her Pentacostal faith and her religious husband, and is trying to figure out who she is now, while still fighting for time with her daughter. Meanwhile, teenage Mary, who is pregnant and homeless, seems to know more about Frances than she should, and when they meet, events entangle them until they must work together to rescue one another. Given Frances’ bone-deep rejection of her evangelical past, this book was still intensely spiritual, though grounded in the firm stance that there are no right answers, no easy path. From a mundane beginning, things get slowly weird, becoming more like a fairy tale for adults. I liked the setting, very firmly planted in Brisbane, as well as the characters, who spanned many social classes and backgrounds. The audiobook was amazing: McGahan is an actress and her narration in this audiobook was phenomenal; her voice roughens to inhabit the sulky, knowing Mary and then switches seamlessly to tired, indignant middle-aged Frances.
Immortality: A Love Story, by Dana Schwartz: Sequel to Anatomy, this book returns to Hazel Sinnett, determined woman doctor in an age where medicine is a profession for men. This story takes Hazel on a convoluted path that eventually brings her to the bedside of Princess Charlotte, granddaughter of King George III, and also draws her into a wary association with a collection of secretive luminaries that call themselves Companions to the Death. I found much of this book hard to swallow; apparently I can suspend disbelief when it comes to magical immortality elixirs, but throwing in Byron, Voltaire, and Lavoisier just felt a little like overkill. The characterization for Jack felt really off-kilter as well. That said, I really enjoyed Hazel’s defiant independence, and how she didn’t need either of the men in her love triangle to help her out of messes. Fun read, with extra fun little medical mysteries.
The Red Scholar’s Wake, by Aliette de Bodard: I keep thinking I’m going to love de Bodard’s books, but they always fall a little short for me. This should have been amazing: scavenger and bot whisperer Xich Si is taken captive by pirates, but in a twist, Rice Fish (sentient ship, leader of the Red Banner pirate fleet, and recent widow) is in need of a wife. She offers Xich Si protection in the form of marriage, in exchange for Xich Si’s engineering capabilities and analytical mind. Xich Si, having little choice, accepts, and is drawn into Rice Fish’s world of interstellar intrigue and pirate politics. The worldbuilding is awesome but the book falls apart in the execution of its characters: for a pirate queen, Rice Fish is oddly insecure and uncertain, whereas Xich Si vacillates between trembling timidity and technical/tactical genius with annoying frequency, and their instant physical and emotional attraction for one another was… not well supported. I love de Bodard’s chinoiserie space aesthetic; I just want better stories and characters.
The Passage, by Justin Cronin: I had no idea what this was going in, but apparently it’s Stephen King’s The Stand, complete with Road Trip Through Post-Apocalyptic America, with relatable, uncomplicatedly good Chosen Ones, and dark, scary Big Bads. Except where King’s bad guy was obviously the devil incarnate, Cronin’s bad guys are… kind of virus-made vampire zombies? I rolled my eyes a bit at the Chosen One bits, in which Cronin’s protagonists are drawn mysteriously by instinct and dream towards the necessary plot points, but I put up with it because the writing was great: tense and detailed and super creepy, especially as the monsters invade the other characters’ dreams and twist their perception of reality. The occasional news clipping or diary entry gave it a nice found-footage feeling, kind of a World War Z vibe. Massive book, first of a series (I think a trilogy). Recommended by KK.
The Witch’s Heart, by Genevieve Gornichec: Gornichec weaves together fragments of Norse myth to tell the story of Angrboda: giantess, witch, and mother of Loki’s children. Angrboda, burned (literally) by her experience with the gods of Asgard, flees as far as she can and makes a solitary life for herself at the edge of a forest. She is visited occasionally by the huntress Skaldi and Skaldi’s sister Gerd, and later on by Loki, with whom she builds a wary but close relationship. The structure of Norse myth determines the path of Angrboda’s story, but Gornichec does an amazing job guiding her characters through it, with Angrboda’s fierce independence and motherly love providing depth and heart to the story, and her power of foresight providing a drumbeat of increasing urgency to the plot. Really beautifully done.
Silver Nitrate, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: I don’t often say this about books, but I wish this had been creepier. Audio mixer Montserrat is good at her work, but doesn’t play well with others and is often passed over for jobs; her best (and only) friend Tristan is an actor past his prime and haunted by tragedy. One day they cross paths with cult horror film director Abel, who talks them into helping finish a magic film that he had been working on with a Nazi occultist. Through him, Tristan and Montserrat are drawn into a world of ghosts, creepy homicidal sorcerors, and cultists who want to resurrect their fallen Nazi leader. Moreno-Garcia makes token gestures at racism and skin tone, but it never becomes a central point as it did in her brilliant Mexican Gothic; Tristan and Montserrat are often threatened by mystical elements but it never feels like they’re in serious trouble. I liked that they were both flawed characters but the relationship between them is… problematic. Bottom line, this book had all the right elements for a spooky read, but honestly it felt like Moreno-Garcia just wanted to nerd out about Mexican horror films and decided to sketch the plot of a suspense novel over top. With Nazis. Perfectly fine workmanship, but it felt like the novel lacked heart.