This book had all the elements of a story that would hook me: a centuries-old heroine with powers from Chinese mythology, a broodingly handsome French elf secret agent, danger and family drama … but the writing felt so juvenile, it was really hard to get into it. The main characters giggled and bantered like awkward teenagers, not immensely powerful immortal beings, and the tell-don’t-show storytelling constantly spent paragraphs on the background and relationships between characters before falling flat on a meaningless and stilted exchange. The entire first two chapters kept making me wonder if I’d missed a much better prequel, since it has to do so much explaining. Other magical characters seemed thrown in as token representation, and the villains never got any dimension at all. I did finish the book and it did eventually get better, but the characters and their conversation were never as cool as they should have been, given their powers and their supposed lifespans.
Category: quick reaction
Gathering Moss, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
I will happily read anything Kimmerer writes; she brings magic to the mundane. She brings two different philosophies to her study of nature: the detail-oriented rigor of her scientific university education, and the reverence and respect toward the world taught by her Potawatomi heritage. When the two approaches are combined, magic happens: tiny mosses and microscopic creatures are described in detail but also given life and spirit: “urgency for departure pulses through [a colony of moss under threat] with remarkable speed” while putting on “a gaudy display of unbridled reproduction.” Science gives her the means to quantify the changes being undergone by the mosses; her Native heritage imbues them with spirit, promoting even greater understanding. Given her voice, mosses under her microscope become rainforests of activity, with rotifers and tardigrades trundling busily among the stems, desiccating impossibly to specks of dust, only to rehydrate to full functionality once their environment contains enough water once more. (The Three Body Problem aliens do exist!) This is a beautiful collection of personal essays about mosses, but it’s also a celebration of nature, and a plea to let it thrive.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong
This is an autobiographical piece written like poetry, which Vuong frames as a letter to his illiterate mother. The writing is gorgeous and heartbreaking; Vuong’s mother is shown lashing out at her young son in one moment, and then her own generational trauma as a war refugee is explored in the next. It’s not an excuse, but an exploration of root causes. Nothing needs to be explained if it’s all out there for you to see. Vuong peppers his experiences with those of his mother’s and grandmother’s, letting us see the impact of racism, class tension, and trauma across generations. He approaches his own experience with love similarly, letting us see his boyfriend in moments of both sweetness and toxic masculinity, showing us just enough of his background to help us recognize him as a product of his surroundings. Vuong has a beautiful deftness with words, and uses them to show how the people in his story manage to communicate love without using words at all.
Untethered Sky, by Fonda Lee
I enjoyed this novella, but I think Lee was so taken by her concept that she neglected character building in favor of general coolness. Narrator Ester narrowly escaped a manticore attack that took half her family; her life became laser-focused towards joining the king’s mews, where rukhers tame and fly the giant rocs that are the kingdom’s only defense against the manticores. The core of the book is the dynamic between Ester’s complete devotion to her roc, and the knowledge that the roc is utterly unmoved by her affection or loyalty. The story makes occasional halfhearted forays into politics and propaganda, but Ester’s unwavering dedication to manticore murder gives her character very little room to grow. Pleasant read with very cool giant bird details, but does not feel like a complete story.
We Were Liars, by E. Lockhart
Points to Lockhart for making you feel sorry for the narrator right off the bat. She’s a poor little rich girl, but her inner pain is vividly portrayed as physical: imaginary knives sink into her skin, objects cleave open her brain, and as blood and viscera pour over her clothes her mother tells her to stand straight and look calm… so she pulls herself together, and does as she is told. As the book goes on, it’s hard to distinguish reality from internal metaphor, but as the clues pile up you begin to understand the origins of her mental disturbance, as well as the ghosts that haunt her wealthy family. The writing style was full of sentence fragments and occasional mid-sentence line breaks; it could have been awkward, but settled quite nicely into the rhythm of stream-of-consciousness narration. Pretty bravely experimental for YA, all things considered.
An Enchantment of Ravens, by Margaret Rogerson
In the town of Whimsy, elves exchange magic for items of human craft; often, the magic has a dark side. Painter Isobel has learned to be very precise with her dealings with elves, but one day makes a mistake by painting a mortal emotion that she sees in the eyes of Rook, the autumn prince. He demands that she appear in his court to answer for her crime; however, during their journey they find that things have gone very wrong in the elven lands. I really loved Rogerson’s elves, who are prickly, vain, and superficial but in their hearts crave the touching, transient beauty of mortality; I also loved Isobel’s defiant embrace of her own humanity. I rolled my eyes a bit at the relationship between Isobel and Rook, but by the end of the book could not imagine them any other way. Surprisingly good; the book just got better as it went along.
The Bone Witch, by Rin Chupeco
This book begins with a woman raising demons from skeletons, as a timid bard creeps up and begins gently drawing her story out of her; in turn, she divulges details about him that she should not know. By all rights it should have ended with their stories meeting together at the present, then proceeding together into a satisfying climax… but as her story dragged on and on, crammed with irrelevant detail and bloated with extraneous characters, I reached page 668 of 714 and realized that there was no way in this book we were going to reach the end of her story. Epic battles and inter-kingdom wars had been hinted at, and she’d barely graduated school. I felt extremely cheated and in no mood to read any further in the series. I was also not a fan of her culture, in which women with magic powers were required to train as warrior-geishas who could sing, dance, kick butt, and still simper and giggle around powerful men while entertaining them. Seriously. Meanwhile male magic-users have to join a killing squad with a high death rate. I was briefly interested when a male magic-using character showed up and wanted to train as a geisha, but we never learn where his story goes because 700 pages later we’re only a fraction done with the story. Definitely not continuing on with this series. (Unless someone tells me it gets more worthwhile.)
You’re That Bitch, by Bretman Rock
I’ll be honest, my decision process for picking up this book was “hey! That gorgeous genderfluid model on the cover of Vogue Philippines also wrote a book?” I expected to put this down after no more than thirty seconds, but instead I got sucked into a fascinating story of a life spent first in the Philippines, then in Hawaii, in the care of a large, rambunctious family, sometimes problematic but always fully supportive. I loved the depictions of his family, particularly his grandmother, mother, and sister, and their Filipino customs; it was also really interesting to read about his journey from baby influencer to self-made star. The tone of the book is light, jammed with interjections like “girl” and “yenno,” feels like he narrated it voice-to-text, and generally made me feel very old; it’s easy to skim (and I did in fact skim past most of the encouraging self-help bits at the end of each chapter) and quick to read.
Ink Blood Sister Scribe, by Emma Törzs
Kudos to this book for not only being well-plotted and well-executed, but also having one of the best as-needed reveals of magic systems I’ve read in a while. The main characters are estranged sisters Esther, who left home at age 18 and never returned; and Joanna, who remained a faithful protector of their family’s library of magical books. Across the ocean, there’s also Nicholas, a Scribe whose inborn magic allows him to write more of those books, though at a severe cost to his health. Eventually, all three of them stumble together into the realization that there is way more to their separate situations than they were ever allowed to understand. Great pacing and smooth writing made this a very satisfying read.
Fablehaven, by Brandon Mull
Delightfully creepy but not too scary at any given time, which is a great balance to strike. Cautious, law-abiding Kendra and her impulsive brother Seth are dropped off at their grandparents’ for the summer; their grandfather Stan seems less than happy with this arrangement, and the children soon find out why, setting themselves up for a summer of magic, adventure, and plenty of opportunities for desperate bravery. I liked how both child and adult characters were given space to both make mistakes and learn from them, in a way that felt organic to the story and not forced. No particularly new ideas here, but very smoothly executed. Ties up the biggest conflicts at the end, but leaves lots of nice open ends for sequels.