A little too YA in execution and tone, but I liked the concept: a girl with mysterious talents and a boy who longs to be a warrior come together in a hunt for a monster that is terrorizing their city. Of course nothing is as simple as it seems and their conflicting loyalties and goals begin to complicate their wary relationship. I liked the monsters drawn from pan-African folktale and the relationship between the kids founded on mutual respect, and some of the plot twists actually took me by surprise… but the writing and dialogue were a little too simplistic for me; don’t think I’ll be reading the sequel despite the dramatic cliffhanger ending.
Category: quick reaction
Pet, by Akwaeke Emezi
In a utopian future where “angels” have rooted out the “monsters” that beset humanity, protagonist Jam draws a creature of vengeance out of a piece of her mother’s artwork, and finds herself an unwilling participant in its hunt for evil. It’s an interesting situation because all her life Jam has been told that there are no more monsters to fear, so that when she does wish to hunt one, she finds that the biggest obstacle is the adults’ lack of belief that danger exists at all. Simply told but sits uncomfortably in the mind; well done.
The Stand, by Stephen King
For book club. I get why people call this an American post-apocalyptic classic, it’s the sheer ambitious scale of it. (Paradoxically, reading King’s pandemic actually made me feel a little better about our current pandemic, because ours is so much less deadly! yay?) King focuses on individual human stories to tell the story of a nationwide tragedy, and then gradually pivots to make it an even bigger story of good vs. pure evil. It really, really didn’t work for me though; it’s too obvious that King is a white guy writing from the whitest state of America. His people of color get to be stereotypes and/or stale tropes; I couldn’t even quietly envision myself in the cast, because if a character isn’t white or heterosexual, King will. point. it. out. The origins and government mismanagement of King’s pandemic also didn’t sit well with me; I know it wasn’t his intent at all, but to me, by painting the government as untrustworthy and inept in the face of a pandemic, it feels like he’s encouraging the real people who are prolonging this pandemic by ignoring the government’s advice on masking and vaccination, ugh. Bad timing, I guess. Also, despite a really patient and gradual buildup of good vs. evil, the climax of the conflict felt pointless and unsatisfying. In short: boy am I the wrong audience for this book.
Sorcerer to the Crown, by Zen Cho
I enjoyed this so much. I’d only read Zen Cho’s Malaysian fairytales before so I was completely unprepared for this extremely Jane Austen-esque treatment of magical England, with bonus characters of color who were looked down on by society, but grudgingly tolerated because they were incredible magicians. (And they were adorable! For any fans of Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, I really feel like Prunella is Iskierka in human form.) The prose and dialogue are florid but also delightfully deadpan; the plot was slow to get started but finished so delightfully that I was sad to get to the end. I already have the sequel on hold at the library.
All Over the Place: Adventures in Travel, True Love, and Petty Theft, by Geraldine DeRuiter
The author is a travel blogger, and I picked her book up because of her hilarious viral pan of a fancy Italian restaurant. The writing style throughout is entertaining, light, and incredibly self-deprecating; she paints lovely portraits of her friends and family, including her quirky parents and her husband who she clearly adores, whose globetrotting job has enabled her to tag along and explore the world despite her self-acknowledged insecurities and lack of directional sense. Her tone throughout is of bemused gratitude at her own good fortune, which I appreciated.
Red Rising, by Pierce Brown
The writing style didn’t really work for me at the beginning, lots of sentence fragments and testosterone, but it grew on me until I found myself paging fluidly through to the end. Incredibly dystopian from top to bottom: the futuristic society’s caste structure is reinforced by bioengineering so that the top castes are literally superhuman compared to the poor workers at the bottom, but even the highest caste children have to go through a Hunger Games type culling to come out on the very top. It’s nuts and weirdly compelling. There’s definitely a lot of casual violence but it’s all presented as mind games, so it doesn’t feel unnecessarily excessive.
A Master of Djinn, by P. Djèlí Clark
This was adorable. It’s a standard setup: a tough, experienced detective has a murder mystery to solve, except in this case the tough detective is the youngest woman working at the Ministry of Alchemy in a magical version of historic Cairo; the murder is of an entire secretive brotherhood; oh, and the repercussions of her investigation threaten to tear down the thin barrier protecting the physical world from the magical realm. Great cast of characters, great progression of plot, really enjoyable read.
Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
The subtitle of this book is Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, which pretty much sums it up. I really loved reading this book, which married the nerdy enthusiasm of a trained botanist with the quiet wonder of one who was raised from childhood to regard plants as teachers. Kimmerer is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and throughout the book tries to harmonize the surviving wisdom passed down from tribal elders with the strict scientific discipline that she was taught in her Western education. She also ties plants into the threads of her life, finding in them reflections of her experience as a mother. Beautiful and thoughtful writing.
Jade Legacy, by Fonda Lee
An absolutely phenomenal conclusion to the Green Bone trilogy. The books started out all gangsters and power struggles, and it would have been a perfectly good ride to keep it at that level, but Lee fearlessly developed it into a story of opposing dynasties trying to outmaneuver one another on an international scale, while keeping her characters grounded in the constant struggle to balance their independence with the family honor. I’ll miss the Kaul family, with their strengths and their stubbornness, and I think the ending was bittersweet and perfect.
The City of Brass, by S.A. Chakraborty
A Cairo thief and con artist meets a djinn and is transported to a city out of legend, populated with tribes of magic-users with deep and complicated histories, and thick with tribal tension and layered political infighting. Chakraborty is really good at giving each character a coherent set of motivations, and making them incredibly sympathetic besides; as the reader I found myself pulling for characters with hopes and needs that directly conflicted with one another, and got totally stressed about how all of them could possibly find happy endings. Even the unlikeable characters’ actions come from a logically sound place. On top of that the surroundings are beautifully drawn, really gorgeous imagery. Amazing stuff. So many questions left for the next volume, argh.