Paints a lovely picture of life in colonial Malaya, gorgeous illustrations of the people and the society; I love the way she wrapped in ghosts and spirits from folklore. The main character is a drip, though, which is a bit of a letdown since her circumstances are so very interesting: a rich family is trying to marry her off to their extremely dead son, who is creepily courting her in her dreams and is not taking no for an answer.
Tag: genre-fantasy
Driftwood, by Marie Brennan
A dreamy and thoughtful collection of interconnected short stories, told to one another by lost souls. Basically Driftwood is a place where worlds go to die: after some kind of cataclysm, people find that their world is now a fragment of itself, smashed up against other dying worlds, each world gradually diminishing until they disappear in the crush of other worlds. In such a place, you cannot hang on to your past life; if you do not wish to disappear with your world, you must become a drifter, homeless until death. Without permanence, the only foundation that the drifters are able to build are the stories they tell one another.
Dark Rise, by C.S. Pacat
Comes off as a pretty standard fantasy story, in which the Light’s Chosen One is a child on the run from the forces of Dark. The really good action-packed beginning is severely blunted by an exposition-heavy worldbuilding middle (seriously, I feel like the author could have done better here), then it gradually ramps up again to a climactic final battle with the miniboss (you don’t take on the big boss at the end of the first book of a trilogy, after all). The book got much better towards the end, which featured a twist that I really enjoyed. Unfortunate that the second book isn’t remotely out yet.
Aru Shah and the End of Time, by Roshani Chokshi
I finally gave into the kid’s wishes and read one of his books, and this is SO charming. It’s basically Percy Jackson, except it’s based off of Hindu mythology. Aru Shah is an insecure, mouthy teen, constantly exaggerating (or outright lying) to put herself in the best light, and I liked how this character note was presented both as a weakness and a strength. Aru meets another girl named Mini, and the two discover that they are both Pandavas reborn, needed to defeat the demon that Aru accidentally awakened while trying to impress her friends. The writing is a bit precious but the jokes are genuinely funny; it works for the middle grade level, keeping the tone casual even as the themes get a little heavy.
A Stranger in Olondria, by Sofia Samatar
This book took forever (months) to read. The prose is incredibly lush; you drown in run-on phrases choked with beautiful adjectives and long inserted quotes from imaginary writers. For me it was too much to take in any one sitting and so I had to dip into it, intermittently, as I would a book of poetry. It’s like sifting through hay to find the needle of the plot, but basically a book-smart spice merchant gets haunted by an illiterate ghost who needs him to write her life story; unfortunately, he has traveled to a country in which haunting is forbidden, and needs to find allies to help him finish his quest. For all the gorgeous descriptive writing the plot moved agonizingly slowly, not picking up till the very end.
A Psalm of Storms and Silence, by Roseanne A. Brown
A little too precious in parts, but in this book Brown does a slightly better job in letting her characters drive the plot instead of making it feel like the characters are being shoehorned into a particular arc (which was the major problem with the book before this one). I like that this book is all about consequences; when humans betray each other, the consequence is a lack of trust; similarly, when very significant magic is done, an enormous price must be paid.
Beasts of Prey, by Ayana Gray
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.
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.
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.
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.