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| 0575100664
| 9780575100664
| 0575100664
| 3.90
| 11,965
| Feb 01, 2009
| Jan 01, 2011
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did not like it
| My life was split between two worlds. I had a normal family, an ordinary upbringing in a typical suburb. My parents weren’t even divorced. This was My life was split between two worlds. I had a normal family, an ordinary upbringing in a typical suburb. My parents weren’t even divorced. This was all a far cry from the other half of my life, where I sat in bars with bounty hunters of supernatural prey, talking about how to rescue my werewolf boyfriend.When it comes to storytelling, the worst crime isn’t being bad — its being boring. Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand commits this crime in spades. The plot of Kitty and Ben hopping off to Vegas to get married without the financial burden or fuss of a full-scale ceremony is a good starting off point, even incorporating Kitty’s show by having her first televised event holds some promise. But that’s all it is: promise. A promise that won’t be met. The Vegas escapades have a distinct travel log feel to them. We get long, drawn-out descriptions of landmarks and performances and gaudy interiors that bog the book down when it desperately needs something to hook on to: a mystery, a conflict, anything. There’s setting a scene and then there’s holding the reader like a literal captive audience to someone’s holiday photos and supplementary anecdotes. And that’s not even getting into Kitty and Ben. While their trip to Vegas is supposed to be for their wedding, Kitty does mix business with pleasure with her show, but that subplot is done after a hundred pages. What else is there? Ben playing poker apparently. Thankfully, we don’t have to be present for the poker. What we do get is Kitty referring to herself as a “petty, spoiled girlfriend” if she had the audacity to get angry at Ben postponing their wedding a few hours so he could play a tournament. The entirety of the poker subplot — including the mob kidnapping Ben — is eye-watering in its pointlessness. Just because Kitty comments on it sounding like a bad mob movie plot doesn’t exempt you from criticism of that very thing. What’s frustrating is that there’s a perfectly solid plot about Ben’s gung-ho hunting buddies learning about his relationship with Kitty and him being a werewolf — a plot that could have easily accommodated a kidnapping — that could have spared everyone the mob shenanigans. With all the dead air in Dead Man’s Hand, it made me reevaluate my feelings about Kitty and Ben as a couple. Here, they are woefully underserved. They’re supposed to be getting married in this book and there is not an ounce of romance to speak of. Honestly, Ben tends to suck out any romance that might sneak into the story, and what we’re left with is an uncompelling pairing. While I like Ben and Kitty as individuals, and love the idea of them as a couple, Vaughn hasn’t sold me on their connection. I’m not expecting anguished declarations or grand gestures, but I need more than sexual compatibility. I don’t even think Ben’s ever said, “I love you” in this series. Even the proposal itself was half-assed: he asked her, without kneeling, in her parents kitchen. He just took the ring out of his pocket, gave it to her, and let her do the math before actually saying the words. Then there’s his kidnapping being undercut by Kitty’s own lack of urgency — and everyone’s sneaking suspicion he got cold feet and ran off. Kitty goes to question the vampires about it and stays over an hour, chatting about nonsense and drinking, before going to the lycanthropes and doing the same thing. Eventually she’s attacked by some hunters, saved by a magician, sexually assaulted by those same lycanthropes before almost being sacrificed to a Mesopotamian goddess. After which Ben sort of stumbles back to their hotel, and the cliffhanger for the next book is the ancient vampire spearheading the sacrifice looking for revenge — the vampire that got no page-time and made no real impact. Fantastic. Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand feels, reads, and, ultimately, is a waste of time. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 16, 2024
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Aug 18, 2024
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Aug 16, 2024
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Paperback
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| 0575100699
| 9780575100695
| 0575100699
| 3.68
| 33,317
| Nov 01, 2005
| Jan 01, 2011
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did not like it
| The world he talked about—vampires, werewolves, things that go bump—was a secret one, even to the people who inadvertently found their way there. P The world he talked about—vampires, werewolves, things that go bump—was a secret one, even to the people who inadvertently found their way there. People fell into it by accident and were left to sink or swim. Usually sink.Kitty and the Midnight Hour is, essentially, a mixed bag. The story of Kitty Norville is initially promising: a midnight radio jockey that finds herself stumbling on to a hit talk show about the paranormal. Kitty’s conversations with her callers are where the books personality shines the brightest, but outside of what if Frasier had a Buffy-esque figure as a host, the story flounders. Even the world itself isn’t greatly sketched out. The conceit of The Midnight Hour show changes drastically within a couple pages, with Kitty initially treating the supernatural discussions with a playfully noncommittal air before suddenly admitting to having met a vampire during an interview. This is a massive tonal shift that is genuinely baffling. Right before this change, Kitty is threatened by the leader of the vampires over her show. You’d think that’d have the opposite effect. We go from her pack and the vampires acting like they're a secret, to very little discussion once she’s outed as a werewolf from regular people, to an official announcement about the existence of the supernatural right at the end — a cliffhanger that drops like a thud. Vaughn did a poor job of presenting this, so I sort of assumed everyone knew at that point. Unfortunately, outside of the premise, there isn’t much to recommend here. The writing is all over the place. For instance, Kitty interviews an Anne Rice stand-in that goes pretty poorly, but ends on an unbelievably phony note when, right as the author is leaving, she divulges her deepest, darkest secret and motivation for her work. The idea that she would just trust a radio jockey with such personal information is outlandish — and so incredibly unearned I expected there to be some kind of twist further on. There wasn’t. But the real shitshow is the Pack; everything related to the Pack. A story about a woman finding the strength to leave an abusive situation should of been the story — and, if you squint, it still is. It’s how Vaughn tells that story that’s the problem. In this version of a Pack, the alpha can do whatever and whoever they want, despicable acts and unhealthy power dynamics be damned. Most of these issues are hastily filed away as just Wolf things, and the idea of a Pack being an abusive cult of might makes right goes completely unanalysed by the story in any meaningful way. Kitty doesn’t choose to leave the Pack in the end because of the physical abuse and sexual coercion perpetrated by her alpha, Carl. Hell, its not even a choice she gets to make. In a case of absolute what-the-fuckery, the story positions Carl as nothing more than a cowardly man and retains almost all of its venom for his mate, Meg. Meg, whose had to deal with the exact same conditions as Kitty, for a lot longer and potentially at greater intensities. Meg, whose entire personality here is boiled down to jealous, conniving and enraged. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be mated to a pathetic, controlling, abusive, cheating piece of shit like Carl — I completely understand why she’d be conniving for a replacement. Kitty, and the story, have zero empathy for that, though. To be clear, I’m not saying Meg is a good person; I’m saying Carl is the villain, if this story needs one. Meg is more of a sub-boss. And the way this story deals with sexual violence is abhorrent. Of course we get the “rape as backstory”. Don’t expect that to matter, or to inform the sexual coercion of her current circumstances — that’d be too thematically consistent for a book that also kills its only minority character at the end. T.J. deserved so much better. Thankfully, by the end, Kitty is out of the Pack, its territory, and hopefully on to better storytelling. Kitty and the Midnight Hour is a poor foundation for a series. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 10, 2024
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Aug 11, 2024
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Aug 10, 2024
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Paperback
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| 1447288939
| 9781447288930
| 1447288939
| 3.80
| 994,232
| 1999
| Nov 16, 2014
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it was ok
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In the woefully crowded pantheon of Jane Austen re-imaginings, Bridget Jones’s Diary is often forgotten about nowadays. To be fair, a great deal of th In the woefully crowded pantheon of Jane Austen re-imaginings, Bridget Jones’s Diary is often forgotten about nowadays. To be fair, a great deal of this is probably because as much as the story sketches the familiar outlines of Pride and Prejudice, its timeliness in relation to the late nineties in cataloging all of the most vapid indignities of being a women in her early thirties — that is, a white woman with a Cosmo subscription and a comfortably middle class income — is generally where the commentary resides. And while much of Bridget’s insecurities still resonate just as much today as they did then, the stories inability to rise above them hasn’t. Social pressure is the ticking time bomb here, rather than the search for security that permeates Austen’s work, and Fielding’s epistolary style better situates us in Bridget’s headspace but at times that space can be awfully tedious. I choose to believe Bridget is an unreliable narrator (or somewhat forgetful) as some of the dialogue here is genuinely bad: People don’t say these things, let alone say them to other people. Natasha is probably Fielding’s greatest victim with her limited page-count, non-existent characterisation, and atrocious word-vomit that’s intended to prove she’s too opinionated and high-strung for Darcy. The Wickham and Darcy of the story, Daniel Cleaver and Mark Darcy, are almost as poorly served as Natasha. With Pride and Prejudice as your template, I was expecting a little more drama related to these two and its actually laughable how unimportant it all is. Fielding obviously can’t have Cleaver run off with Bridget’s younger sister (whose also a minor) without drastically changing the tone of the story, so she has Julio (he has maybe two lines) be the catalyst for Darcy’s heroics at the end. Bridget Jones’s Diary is a sometimes fun, oftentimes sincere portrayal of a woman’s neuroticism and insecurities, I just wish it was a little more concise when it came to its storytelling and a lot more expansive when it comes to its main romance. Also, the book can be placed on the much vaunted list of Books that are, in fact, Not Better than the Movie. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 04, 2024
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Aug 05, 2024
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Aug 04, 2024
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| 1473616115
| 9781473616110
| 1473616115
| 4.01
| 232,472
| Dec 1959
| Jun 23, 2015
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it was ok
| Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called “natural human rights” tha Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called “natural human rights” that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.The world Heinlein depicts in Starship Troopers is both selectively cynical and quietly optimistic in a manner it masks as realism — when it comes to the failures of democracy its loquacious, but the efficacy of a stratocracy as depicted here, Heinlein is far less hesitant to grasp for platitudes. The actual story of a rich kid rebelling against the cushy life his parents have mapped out for him is quickly sidelined by the minutiae of basic training and the petty politics therein. The meat of the story is actually a series of political and philosophical polemics/lectures by Heinlein, through various characters but primarily Mr Dubois, a teacher of Rico’s. I imagine the effectiveness of this overly-didactic storytelling depends considerably on whether you agree with Heinlein’s points. Often, I didn’t. The lectures of violence and duty, on the necessity of state violence and a citizens duty to implement it, I can only say the analysis here is fairly shallow. An uncritical approach to state violence isn’t all that thought-provoking to me. Neither is mocking the idea that “violence never settles anything” as Dubois takes this almost too literally to believe, and invokes Bonaparte and Hitler — two figures whose use of state violence ended all matters related to the use of them in the first place, according to Dubois. Yes, it was definitely the violence and absolutely nothing else. The continued colonial troubles France would incur in the century after Napoleon’s ignominious exile in 1814 would suggest it hadn’t quite settled anything. The Hitler example speaks for itself. Essentially, you don’t “settle” an issue by killing your opponent — you just postpone it. That isn’t to say state violence doesn’t have value; it’s just that that value is in continual negotiation with other means of reconciliation. There are other discussions related to the efficacy of corporal punishment I find fall into that quiet optimism masking itself as realism. There’s also a incident when one of the MI’s goes AWOL and kills a child, only for that man to be turned over to his unit and dealt with. Military law taking precedence over civil law is just insane, especially for the grieving parents. Outside of that, the power armor is cool. Rico is a good protagonist but he’s never given any decent characters to play off of unless he’s being lectured in some capacity, and that wears thin by the halfway mark. I struggled to get through Starship Troopers, and the discussion around this book and its intentions are far more interesting than a single page of its actual content. But the main reason there is anything to debate at all related to it is due to how passionately inchoate most of the ideas are expressed here. Almost any reading beyond the staunch militarism is possible in my mind, and it wouldn’t take much imagination. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 29, 2024
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Aug 04, 2024
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Jun 29, 2024
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Paperback
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| 9798987169261
| B0CT31J87Q
| 4.49
| 458
| Jan 20, 2024
| Jan 22, 2024
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it was ok
| Mircea, the father I loved and distrusted in equal measure — could he be sincere this time. Or was this just another game?The amount of lines, pa Mircea, the father I loved and distrusted in equal measure — could he be sincere this time. Or was this just another game?The amount of lines, paragraphs, whole chapters, entire multiple-book-long arcs that have covered this sentiment in Chance’s nearly twenty books is diabolical. What’s even worse is that the answer is always the same. Yes, Mircea cares. He cares in his specifically overbearing and manipulative way of his. I need this series to move on from this conflict. This universe’s Mircea problem is a little ridiculous at this point. Every protagonist has been unforgivably victimised by him in some way — and he’s always forgiven. There’s a discussion between Mircea and Cassie here about if the mother of Dory and Dorina will ever forgive him, too. Trust me: she will. Fortune’s Blade is our first, extensive foray into Faerie in Dory’s series, and the results are largely disappointing. I thought the dual-perspectives of Dory and Dorina might shake up the storytelling, but we just get the same harried scrambling through action sequences that go on far longer than they should. Often multiple chapters of “and then, and then, and THEN,” and while Chance’s flourish and spectacle have been one of the major selling points, her characters always came first in my opinion. To recap, then, Zeus wanted to use Dorina, Aeslinn and his puppet Steen wanted to kill her, and if she got to the portal before either of those things happened, whatever was on the other side might be even worse.Which is why I struggled with this instalment. Aside from reiterating the sense of loss both Dory and Dorina have without the other, and then having someone give them a pep-talk, there isn’t much else here. I also found Dorina and Ray’s build-up and romance here lacking, which is baffling to me. After pairings like Cassie and Pritkin, and Dory and Louis-Cesare, it didn’t even occur to me to worry about the romance in this book. I was fairly confident if all else disappoints, that wouldn’t. This might have something to do with actually not realising Chance was setting up a romance between them until Dorina’s first chapter in Fortune’s Blade where Ray lays it on thick, to Marlowe’s amusement. And maybe Ray’s relationship with Dory colouring my view of their connection in the last instalment. Either way, we didn’t even have Dory and Louis-Cesare to fall back on: they were too busy either fighting, fleeing or grievously injured to do much more than pass exposition between each other. And that’s only when one could hear the other. Unfortunately, the story itself isn't terribly engaging either. My disinterest in the dragon-palooza is due to it not being tethered to any one particularly compelling character or idea, even. It’s not enough to state over and over how important this and that alliance is — or how threatening someone else is, either — I need to appreciate it before everything goes to hell. This isn’t helped by the action feeling extremely passive. The only time I actually connected with an action scene is when Dory finally killed Steen with Louis-Cesare’s help. It reminded me of when she tore her way through the body of one of those monstrous birds at the end of Midnight’s Daughter. The violence was a desperate, furious reaction to a personal threat, rather than the continuous and borderline impersonal threats that plague this book. On a completely different note, when Louis-Cesare and Dory stumble on a naked Ray and a naked (and seemingly drugged) Dorina, the fact that their minds so quickly and definitively go to thinking Ray drugged and raped her is alarming. The book ends with Mircea, Dorina and their mother lost in another world and Dory determined to find them. As far as cliffhangers go, its a decent one, but I just hope Chance can find a better balance between spectacle and character by then. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 25, 2024
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Jun 28, 2024
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Jun 25, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 1408725797
| 9781408725795
| 1408725797
| 4.10
| 466,237
| Jun 13, 2023
| Jun 13, 2023
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did not like it
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Love, Theoretically's backdrop for its romance is academia — Elsie, our protagonist, is a theoretical physicist who moonlights a fake-girlfriend gig t
Love, Theoretically's backdrop for its romance is academia — Elsie, our protagonist, is a theoretical physicist who moonlights a fake-girlfriend gig to supplement her inadequate income. The fake-girlfriend element is dropped very early on, and by the end of the book, it’s easy to forget that it existed at all. Instead, Hazelwood attempts (rather poorly, in my opinion) to make the academia and physics approachable. No amount of pop culture references is going to make the driest breakdown of a scandal surrounding the disciplines of theoretical and experimental physics entertaining, not at face value. It takes skill to explain a complicated idea simply, and true brilliance to then make that entertaining; we get neither of them here. The romance suffers in the mire of this. Elsie and Jack, the older brother of one of her clients, tick all the same boxes as Misery and Lowe in Bride. There’s immediate antagonism, the protagonist believes the love interest hates them because of his absurd intensity and ludicrous staring. It eventually turns out he doesn’t actually hate them, and is aggressively repressing his attraction and pushing her away. In one particularly specific similarity, the protagonist snoops in the guys bedroom and finds a picture of themselves. Unlike Bride, the world of academia is given a lot more attention than anything related to Were/Vampyre/Human politics. The issue is that its either dry or underwritten; its grueling minutiae or flavourless broadstrokes. And that’s frustrating because a lot of the issues grazed here are interesting and worthy of exploration, but a novel like Love, Theoretically doesn’t have the space for it. I would have loved a more expansive take on the sexism in such a male-dominated discipline (what we got, I appreciated), but I can’t fault the book too much for something I don’t think it was ever trying to be. As to Elsie and Jack, I thought they were eventually cute. Personally, if I had someone psychoanalysing me every time I so much as shrugged in his general direction, I would want to do violence. And like a lot of romances that use the first sexual climax as their climax (anything two-thirds of the way in), the relationship feels shallow and doomed to fail. Skipping all those shit-testing steps in a relationship to hurdle right into unique, precious true love rarely works for me. Maybe I’ve watched too much True Crime to not see grand gestures weeks into a relationship (coupled with how special and perfect and forever their love is, according to the person making the gesture) as anything other than love-bombing. Especially when one half of the relationship is only learning to assert herself by the end. Of course, the book does the late-in-the-game break-up where Elsie fights with Jack after he reveals her mentor is a controlling asshole. What’s so eye-rolling about these rote dramatic moments is how little time left there is to do anything terribly significant in the way of the conflict justice. Literally the next page is her mentor, Dr. L. going full mask-off and acting as cartoonishly controlling as possible for Elsie to get a clue. It’s low-effort, but I didn’t care anyway. I just didn’t enjoy Love, Theoretically. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 21, 2024
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Jun 22, 2024
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Jun 21, 2024
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Paperback
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| 1784751340
| 9781784751340
| 1784751340
| 4.35
| 256,309
| Dec 30, 1996
| Jan 01, 1898
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did not like it
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Drums of Autumn is a plodding traipse through the wilderness of North Carolina from start to finish. The promise of a new continent, with new horizons Drums of Autumn is a plodding traipse through the wilderness of North Carolina from start to finish. The promise of a new continent, with new horizons, and new challenges never actually materialises plot-wise, not in any significant way at least — and given this books not insignificant bulk of 1200 pages, that’s almost an achievement. Claire and Jamie’s initial settling on land they name Fraser’s Ridge feels like fertile ground for storytelling — the politicking Jamie might have to do to keep it is referenced at one point, but otherwise dropped; gathering the surviving prisoners from Ardsmuir to settle alongside him could infuse the story with the tragic echoes of the Jacobite Rising, but they’re barely background characters. Hundreds and hundreds of pages pass in a hilariously tedious fashion instead. Claire and Jamie discuss their own deaths right before being attacked by a bear. The writing covering this attack is particularly confusing, but somehow Jamie kills the bear with just a little stiffness afterwards. I did like Jamie connecting with a native tribe after this, but the connection — like so much of this book — doesn’t go anywhere story-wise. We get two more incidences of either Claire or Jamie having an accident in the woods only to be rescued by the other, but the repetition leaves the stakes below sea level. Especially Claire’s incident. She gets lost in the woods during a rainstorm and starts reciting poetry to a human skull at nearly five hundred pages in. The plot goes round and round, refusing to go anywhere, do anything; Claire and Jamie bleat quotes at each other, profess their timeless love, and the surrounding characters pop up to get a sparing diagnosis and treatment plan. Outside of Claire and Jamie, we get sections of Brianna and Roger back in 1970. Their romance feels very perfunctory. Within the context of Brianna’s age, isolation, and sexual inexperience, Roger’s outburst when she turns down his marriage proposal is disheartening. Thankfully most of that is overshadowed by Brianna’s traveling through the stones to warn Claire she’ll die in a fire in 1776, after discovering a historical obituary; Roger knew but kept it to himself. What a prize. The sections of Roger and Brianna traveling separately in the past are some of the most tedious chapters in the book, and that is a very competitive title. The last few hundred pages are a little more fast paced — still slow, but an improvement over the rest. Of course, it involves rape. Brianna’s rape to be specific. The circumstances that lead to Brianna’s rape are breathtaking. She decides to meet a pirate inside his ship, alone, in the hopes of buying back her mother’s ring. The act itself is explicitly depicted, of course, and this sets off a sequence of events that are astonishing in their own right. The miscommunication trope isn’t one I dislike; it just needs a deft hand to make it believable. In terms of Drums of Autumn, the trope requires too many people not talking to work. This series and its main cast are a chatty bunch, and spend reams of pages endlessly going over the same handful of topics. There is no universe where critical information isn’t shared between them for months — if only accidentally— as they’re all holed up in the same place. It’s an exhausting read. Lastly, once Brianna’s rape is revealed, Jamie makes a point of discussing the necessity of forgiveness — for your rapist. According to him, the only way to find true peace is to forgive your rapist, and while how any particular person deals with their trauma is wholly up to them, and them alone, the prescriptive nature of Jamie’s words don’t seem to allow for that. So much of trauma, especially sexual violence, has little to do specifically with the perpetrator. Its about the loss of certainty, of security — of even one’s sense of self after such a gross violation. Of all the ways to heal that trauma, forgiving your rapist is not even in the top thousand, and centering the healing so completely around it makes me uncomfortable. This book is too long. When it comes to length, it’s a common pitfall to assume complexity requires density. Or, that density implies complexity. Most of the time, it just means a bloated, self-indulgent story that gets nowhere fast, and Drums of Autumn is nothing if not that. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 13, 2024
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Jun 20, 2024
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Jun 13, 2024
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Paperback
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| 1784751359
| 9781784751357
| 1784751359
| 4.39
| 315,391
| Dec 01, 1993
| Jan 01, 1830
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it was ok
| I had not dared to think what life might be like once I had found Jamie, lest I not find him after all. Then I had found him, and in quick successi I had not dared to think what life might be like once I had found Jamie, lest I not find him after all. Then I had found him, and in quick succession, had contemplated life as a printer’s wife among the political and literary worlds of Edinburgh, a dangerous and fugitive existence as a smuggler’s lady, and finally, the busy, settled life of a Highland farm, which I had known before and loved.Voyager is essentially two different stories — books even. At over a thousand pages, the first six hundred explore Claire’s final few weeks in the twentieth century as she works with Roger and her daughter to track Jamie’s whereabouts since his miraculous survival at Culloden. Gabaldon wisely invests in Jamie’s perspective, too, adding flashbacks when Claire discovers a new bit of information. It charts the course up until their reunion, reconciliation, and an overwhelming amount of melodrama thereafter. Of the two books, this is undoubtedly the strongest. Its not without its issues of course. Picking up right where Dragonfly in Amber left off, Brianna’s change in temperament toward Jamie is confusing. She goes from vehemently making a point of calling Frank her father (in the last book) to casually referring to Jamie as such here, and the difference is a matter of hours, maybe a day. Then there’s the treatment of Frank, himself. He’s a fairly sympathetic figure in this series. Not an ideal husband, to be sure (its heavily implied he cheated on her during wartime), but neither was Jamie. Sadly, his reintroduction lacks the nuance and subtlety of his position in the story — as a poignant echo of what might have been, of the road not taken. He lost Claire three years ago, and suddenly she’s reappeared, pregnant and raving about travelling though time — and not just any period, but the one he has a special interest in as a historian. And the best response Gabaldon has for him on reuniting with her again is declaring theatrically that he’ll find out where she’s been as the hospital staff sedate her. Maybe if we’d actually gotten his perspective it wouldn’t feel like such a left-turn, but you’d think the shock of the situation would keep him from acting so brashly from the jump. It just feels underwritten and manipulative — a through-line for everything involving Frank in this book, come to think of it. Outside of that, I really enjoyed the majority of Jamie’s perspective, especially his relationship with John Grey, but that comes to an abrupt end by the time we’re introduced to Geneva. Described as a “spoiled brat” from a wealthy family Jamie works for, the young woman decides that since she’s going to be married off to an unattractive old man, she’ll threaten Jamie’s family so he’ll be the one to take her virginity. The sheer ridiculousness of this scenario makes it come across like a porno. I get Jamie is the sexiest motherfucker to grace the Highlands, but the leaps and bounds it takes for me to believe this scenario aren’t there. To protect his family, Jamie’s agrees and the framing of this encounter is disheartening. Jamie is a rape survivor, and here he is, again, about to be raped to protect a loved one and there is no acknowledgment of that. Which, naturally, makes me think Gabaldon doesn’t view it as a rape. Whether unintentionally or not, it positions sexual violence — no matter how unambiguous, as it is here — as something that can only be perpetrated by men. The mere suggestion of a romantic overture from John Grey was enough to evoke his trauma and his wrath, but the exact same scenario (right down to him having to submit to his rapist) is played out by a woman and there’s nothing. That said, Gabaldon goes and adds another awful dimension to this. Geneva gets cold feet once she experiences the pain of Jamie penetrating her and says, “Stop it” and “take it out”. Jamie replies, “No,” and continues on. So he’s now raping her. It’s as horrendous as it sounds. There’s a particular phrase that gets bandied about nowadays when talking about consent: “no means no”. Some view it as a paltry and naive conceit of modern sensibilities, but that requires you to take the phrase at face value only. To treat it as a full thought rather than a springboard to be launched at more complicated ideas. It’s an acknowledgement of a larger vocabulary for consent that’s only been explored and championed in the last decade, if even that. We still live in a time when an article of clothing can discount any action or word a victim of sexual violence might take during their attack, and so its important to buttress dialogue that explores how consent can be given and taken away at any point. Tragically, all of this is in service to giving Jamie a son — so Geneva dies in childbirth, snipping that loose end in the bud. The last 400 pages operate much more like the last two books, but with even less direction. Without the spectre of the Jacobite Rising in Dragonfly in Amber or Claire’s desperate attempts to return to her time in Outlander, or Claire’s determination to return to Jamie at the start of this book, the second half struggles. Badly. That everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach could be forgiven with effective melodrama to tether it, but there isn't any. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean in search of Young Ian is a poor substitute. Despite the size of these novels, Gabaldon hasn’t really invested in characters beyond Jamie and Claire. What’s more, the new slate of background characters include grueling caricatures like Joe Abernathy, Claire’s black best friend from the sixties whose Jive-talking and respectability politics are then traded for Mr. Willoughby, a Chinese man whose introduced doing back-flips and fiendishly harassing women to satisfy his foot fetish. Even the way Claire refers to him in her internal monologue is degrading. Worse still, Gabaldon has Claire attend a Slave Market and cause a scene. Somewhere deep inside, I knew it would make no difference, would not help in any way, would do nothing but harm. And yet I could not stand here, consenting by silence. It was not for the branded girls, the man in the block, not for any of them that I did it; it was for myself.The self-awareness heightens the performative nature of Claire’s outburst, one that prioritizes her vanity over actual slaves. On a meta-textual level, its Gabaldon admitting to the audience she’s using the Slave Market as just another dramatic encounter — the plight of the slaves will not be covered as the Scots have been previously. Voyager hits its emotional peak and narrative catharsis about halfway through with the reconciliation of Jamie and Claire, and scrabbles unsuccessfully through its remaining several hundred pages trying to find another in a new continent. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jun 09, 2024
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Jun 13, 2024
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Jun 09, 2024
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Paperback
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| 1784751367
| 9781784751364
| 1784751367
| 4.34
| 365,026
| Jul 01, 1992
| Feb 19, 2015
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liked it
| “No, the fault lies in the artists,” Claire went on. “The writers, the singers, the tellers of tales. It’s them that take the past and re-create it “No, the fault lies in the artists,” Claire went on. “The writers, the singers, the tellers of tales. It’s them that take the past and re-create it to their liking. Them that could take a fool and give you back a hero, take a sot and make him a king.”Dragonfly in Amber starts strong with a compelling reveal: Claire does, in fact, return to her time. From the perspective of Roger Wakefield, we meet Claire again in 1968 — twenty years older, with her very tall and ginger daughter in tow — as she looks into potential survivors of the battle of Culloden. Within these eighty pages, there’s a lot of filler with Roger that distracts from the story, despite the fact I enjoyed the first hints at Gabaldon experimenting with other perspectives than Claire. Roger just wouldn’t have been my first, second, or third choice. Its only once Claire reveals to her daughter that her biological father isn’t Frank but an 18th century Highlander that the story gets interesting. So, of course, Gabaldon whips us back to 1744. By all accounts, France in 1744 — specifically, Jamie and Claire attempting to change the course of history — should be the more interesting timeline. But, like with the first section from 1968, the great majority of the page-count covers Jaime coming home from entertaining so-and-so’s of import and filling Claire in on his progress; in the meantime, Claire sniffs out the nearest place to put her medical expertise to use; and the incorporation of historical tidbits Gabaldon found through researching that’s she’s going to slot in whether its particularly useful to the story being told. We also get a Back to the Future-styled understanding of time paradoxes. With Jack Randall presumed dead, Claire ponders why her wedding ring to Frank hasn’t disappeared. Time-travel and its implications play a larger role this time around, but always feel like an afterthought. Personally, I think that’s for the best. None of these elements are bad by design. It’s just that Gabaldon doesn’t treat them as a garnish to her main course (the plot). The sheer breadth of characters and side plots this approach accumulates makes it difficult to care about any one in particular. The pathos remains stubbornly with Claire and Jamie, so when the story veers in other directions (and it does, often), its hard to give a single fuck about Mary, or Louise (Claire’s new best friend), or Raymond. We already know they’ll be discarded within a few hundred pages, possibly never to be mentioned again. During their time in France, Jamie takes in a child pickpocket to help intercept letters for him. I really didn’t like Jamie changing his name from Claudel to Fergus. For a series that, so far, has concerned itself with the preservation of Scottish culture and its way of life, you’d think it’d be more respectful to others. Regardless, Jamie catches Randall raping Claudel and challenges him to an illegal duel. While racing to stop it, Claire has a catastrophic miscarriage. Once Claire recovers, she learns Jaime is in the Bastille and offers herself to the King of France for his release. This series of events leads to a bizarre interaction between Jamie and Claire once he finds out. Claire is apparently so racked with guilt she begs Jaime to beat her, again. Its a throwaway scene that sears the eyes to read. I hate how Claire’s actions are framed here, prioritising Jaime’s feelings over her own. Either way, after five hundred or so pages, there’s been three rapes. The handling of Mary’s rape was predictably poor, with more time paid on Jaime’s suffering than Mary’s. Claudel’s rape has the exact same problem, with it being about how it effected Jamie. That’s a little more understandable given his brutal history with the rapist, but the next rape is also made about his feelings. When Claire is raped by the King of fucking France, she rationalises it in a multitude of things — all of which are about motherfucking Jamie. Banished from France, Jamie and Claire head back to Scotland with Claudel. Jenny and Ian in Lallybroch are a breath of fresh air after all of that, but like with Outlander, after about a hundred pages here the story gears up for its climax. This time, its the Rising. Except for one brief glimpse from Jamie’s perspective, much of the battles play out similar to Claire and Jamie’s time in France: Jamie’s relating the essential moments afterwards. The novelty wears off a lot quicker this time. For all my frustrations with this book, the last thirty pages from 1745 are some of the series most compelling so far. Gabaldon’s skill for melodrama is ratcheted up without the excessive lulls in between, and before the reader can consider the fallout of the climax, Claire is thrust back into the standing stones, pregnant once more, with Jamie’s fate at Culloden sealed. Meeting strength for strength, the last sixty pages back in the future do a fantastic job of continuing that melodrama. I do wish Brianna and Roger’s disbelief had been more pointed, and Claire’s own state hadn’t been so uncharacteristically fragile. It was disappointing, but unlike with Outlander, I came away from reading Dragonfly in Amber curious about the next instalment. ...more |
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Jun 03, 2024
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Jun 09, 2024
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Jun 03, 2024
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Paperback
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| 4.26
| 1,084,817
| Jun 01, 1991
| Feb 19, 2015
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it was ok
| Six weeks ago I had been innocently collecting wild flowers on a Scottish hill, to take home to my husband. I was now shut in the room of a rural Six weeks ago I had been innocently collecting wild flowers on a Scottish hill, to take home to my husband. I was now shut in the room of a rural inn, awaiting a completely different husband, whom I scarcely knew, with firm orders to consummate a forced marriage, at risk of my life and liberty.Since its publication back in 1991, Outlander has struggled to find its rightful place on bookstore shelves. In hindsight, I think that says more about the publishing industry than it does the story. Had Outlander been written by a man, I have little doubt the book would have jumped between historical fiction and historical fantasy (its true place) at the whim of whoever was stocking the shelves on any given day, rather than sequestered in various romance sections. While Outlander can enjoyably be read as historical romance — romance underpins its story just as crucially as eighteenth century Scotland — it belies its premise and its protagonist to do so. Initially set in 1945, Claire Randall and her husband, Frank, honeymoon to the Scottish Highlands on a trip to ostensibly become reacquainted after their separation during the war. However, its obvious that Frank’s far more concerned with his own genealogy in the region, chatting with the locals about their history and traditions as Claire dutifully indulges her husbands latest preoccupation. Sixty pages is a little steep of a curve to establish their relationship. Despite being understandable given Frank is Claire’s main impetus to return to her own time, with how the story pans out, the call of indoor plumbing and hot water would have done just as good and taken far less time. One day while left to her own devices, Claire crosses through the barrier of time (via ancient stone circle) and is transported two hundred years into the past. Once we’re in the eighteenth century, the story discards the genre of fantasy as fast as it introduces it. This is best typified by Claire’s borderline bland realisation and acceptance of her journey through time. A certain amount of adaptability on her part is perfectly reasonable with her experiences as a nurse during the war, even if its a little lacking dramatically. Claire’s ability to compartmentalise her situation leads to some strong character moments, too, but its a double-edged sword that underwhelms potentially interesting plot points, like time travel, on occasion. After stumbling upon a clash between English soldiers and Scots, Claire ends up under the watchful and suspicious care of some Highlanders in the region, and is forced to navigate a series of secrets and lies as everyone suspects her of being everything from a spy to a witch. The conflict here alone is more than enough to sustain the novel, but Gabaldon’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach veers the trajectory of the story every which way. From evoking the Jacobite Rising of 1945 to actually having Claire on trial for witchcraft (she’s also taken by the redcoats and sexually assaulted on more than one occasion), the story awkwardly bends to the whims of a writer that hasn’t a concrete path forward in mind, let alone a destination. That isn’t always a problem, but when your novel is nearly 900-pages, its hard to argue a great deal of that isn’t the excesses of that reality. Things happen, often dramatically, but the events feel episodic and disconnected from each other. That isn’t to say a lot of this isn’t entertaining, because it is. But my patience with the storytelling evaporated once we got to Lallybroch. Six hundred pages in and the story comes to a devastating halt. If the meandering from one random plot point to another was frustrating, this was maddening. Jaime and Claire cosplay as eighteenth century landlords for nearly a hundred pages before Gabaldon remembers, presumably, the book needed to end with something resembling a climax. So, of course, Jaime is taken by the Watch and Claire spends a not insignificant amount of time looking for him. She eventually does find him, and he’s been brutalised and raped by Jack Randall. At this point, the near-constant threat of sexual violence has made this additional ordeal exhausting. With the choice of having Jaime be raped, she’s added the kitchen sink to the mix, and given how little time she has left, there’s not enough pages to honestly deal with the repercussions of such a story choice. Gabaldon’s fast-acting resolution for Jamie’s trauma is some pop psychology and a dash of religion. It’s horrendously rushed, and after enduring so much needless sexual violence throughout the book, its disheartening how little the author has to actually say about the aftermath of one. Outlander stumbles because it tries to juggle too many ideas at once. On a technical level, the writing is adverb-heavy to the extreme. Characters can barely move or breathe in without an accompanying modifier to hand-hold the reader through a scene. That won’t bother some, but for me it became grating over time. In terms of this being a debut novel, its ambitious scope and concept is commendable. Lastly, I have to be thorough about the pervasive sexual violence in this book. Claire is assaulted and threatened with rape a lot. First by Black Jack Randall, then there’s a tense moment when she’s introduced to Jamie’s group where the possibility is introduced before Dougal squashes it. Dougal prevents another such assault in Castle Leoch only to assault her as “payment” and tells her to hurry on before he rapes her. THEN there’s the two deserters, and then Randall again. If you’re counting, that’s five separate instances in less than that many hundred pages. We also get a scene where Jaime “beats” Claire with a belt for wondering off and nearly getting raped. That’s the word the book uses — “beats” — and the damage done prevents her from sitting for three days. He also gets aroused from it, which we learn in the same conversation where he confesses he had to restrain himself from “rogering” her then and there he was so excited. What’s disappointing about this is the potential a scene like this has to dive headfirst into the values dissonance between the two, but with that injection of eroticism any talk of Highlander justice feels hollow. The only other time we mix violence with eroticism is with Jack Randall. Throughout the book, Gabaldon staunchly upholds a queasy “boys will be boys” philosophy to sexual violence. This doesn’t mean she’s portraying these men as good people, but she writes about their predation as if its a natural instinct no different from eating or drinking, just another need to be fulfilled. Women must fend off their advances as if they were doing nothing more than trying to sneak a bit of food from your plate. With a kind of motherly forbearance. The knee-jerk rejoinder to this kind of critique is that it’s historically accurate, as if sexual violence isn't as much a reality for woman today as it was then. And still, rape isn't a mainstay plot device of the majority of contemporary stories. Regardless, my contention isn’t about historical accuracy, its about its recurrence and relevance to the plot. Gabaldon wrote a story that required timetravel to work, because she wanted Claire to act as a relatable cipher for herself and the audience. She also included a three-page chapter about a magically disappearing waterhorse, to add tension to a witch trail several decades too late (something she admits herself). Why? Because she wanted to. And if the story is strong, that’s as good of a reason as any. My point is that she wrote every act of sexual violence with the same creative pull, and I’m betting it had less to do with historical accuracy, and a lot more to do with some combination of her being turned on by being “ravaged by a savage” and the cheap shock value of rape, and that's, at best, a writing choice that is both lazy and repetitive. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 27, 2024
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Jun 03, 2024
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May 27, 2024
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Paperback
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| 1804940844
| 9781804940846
| 1804940844
| 4.24
| 105,753
| Aug 17, 2013
| Apr 13, 2023
|
liked it
| “You want me to name all the times in history that one person led to the death of millions?” Donald asked. “Something like five or a dozen people “You want me to name all the times in history that one person led to the death of millions?” Donald asked. “Something like five or a dozen people made this happen. You might be able to trace it back to three. And who knows if one of those men was influencing the other two? Well, if one man can build this, it shouldn’t take more than that to bring it all down. Gravity is a bitch until she’s on your side.”For all of its strengths — its immersive worldbuilding, compelling premise, and a strong protagonist in Juliette — the Silo trilogy has often struggled with its pacing. With Wool it was forgivable as Howey had to do a lot of heavy-lifting introducing us to this world. Once we got to Shift, the excuses didn’t come so readily. What we learned about the doomsday scenario that created the world of Wool amounted to, at the most charitable, about a hundred and fifty pages of story in a five-hundred-page book, and the rest of the page-count was spent playing catch-up to a story I’d much prefer to be reading. Thankfully, Dust is that story. Set some time after Juliette’s unexpected hero’s welcome back to 18, the good favour she’d earned seems all but squandered. Since recovering from her extensive burns, she’s neglected her mayoral duties and spent her time back overseeing the drilling of a passage to Silo 17. Juliette’s commitment to full disclosure at the end of Wool isn’t the potentially profound success it could have been due to her absenteeism. Revealing world-shattering information and disappearing to drill disruptively in the bowels of the Silo was bound to sow a little discontent. That’s not to say Juliette could have stemmed most of the backlash with a reassuring hand. The truth of a wider conspiracy, one that includes multiple Silos, was going to be met with disbelief. Her presence might have tempered it from becoming outright hostility as quickly as it did. The front half of the book covers the drilling to 17 a little too long. Howey juggles named characters around without much time to flesh any of them out. I genuinely can’t say I care about any characters in 18 or 17 other than Solo and Juliette. Even Lukas, but his role this time around is tragically minimal with how his arc ends. One surprise was how much I enjoyed the chapters covering Donald and Charlotte in Silo 1. They’re essentially stowaways as they try to continue their communication with Juliette (and Lukas). Donald’s brief stint outside in Shift didn’t leave him unscathed either; he’s dying, in fact. For the bookend of a hefty trilogy, Howey lands about as many punches as he pulls. The destruction of 18 is a decisive turn the story needed, even if it doesn’t have the emotional impact it could have had. Without better defined characters, the unfolding tragedy feels mostly materialistic in its loss — a loss of resources and comfort. The loss of the known for the unknown eventually takes over to better effect. A couple subplots just didn’t work for me personally. Lukas and Juliette’s relationship was given no time, and the religious subplot was given far too much. Once the page-count is dwindling between sixty pages, I don’t want to read about book burnings or attempts at making a young girl a child bride. The conclusion is awfully abrupt for my taste. A bombastic climax is teased by Juliette only for her "last stand" to become a trek with a couple of other suited-up people from Silo 18. Personally, I'd have preferred Juliette blasting into 1 and giving them a taste of their own medicine to her stumbling onto a safe haven with faith as her guide. I didn’t expect the series to end with all questions answered — that’s the purview of author Q&A’s, not satisfying storytelling, after all — but so much is disappointingly left up in the air that its hard to appreciate the ending for what it is. It’s bizarre to think that a series spanning 1500 pages can spend cumulatively more page time on the marital woes of Donald and Helen (that only mostly don’t matter) than it can on the status of the remaining Silos by the end. ...more |
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1
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May 15, 2024
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May 27, 2024
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May 15, 2024
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Paperback
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| 1804940836
| 9781804940839
| 1804940836
| 4.12
| 116,147
| Jan 28, 2013
| Apr 13, 2023
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it was ok
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I came away from reading Shift admiring the book conceptually more than actually enjoying my reading experience. A prequel covering the events leading
I came away from reading Shift admiring the book conceptually more than actually enjoying my reading experience. A prequel covering the events leading up to the apocalypse and the deterioration of the silos before we meet Jules in Wool has great potential. I just don’t think that potential was realised anywhere in Shift’s nearly six hundred pages. The circumstances of the world-ending catastrophe are far more sci-fi inspired in origins than I’d have expected. Our doomsday scenario is predicated on America’s fear of the use of nanobots in warfare. According to the book, nanotechnology has evolved to the point that it can attack entire populations through their DNA. What exactly that means isn’t adequately explained, but it would result in a controlled pandemic geared at only intended victims through their genetics. How it differentiates between, say, an American, and another nationality, I don’t know. We also learn the nuclear devastation was devised by those who built the 50 silos in the first place: a secret subsection of the US government. Choosing to destroy themselves in order to control the fallout — rather than choosing to do literally anything else — is the kind of monomaniacal logic I expect from people so far removed from everyday life, so I have no issues believing that. Story-wise, this reveal comes early in the book and everything after that suffers as Howey fills in the gaps without much enthusiasm. There’s no where to go but around in circles as it slowly catches up to the events of Wool. And hundreds of pages of this had me begging the book to move on from Donald, Mission, or anything pre-Jules. Our two main viewpoints are Donald, an architect of the silos that’s unwittingly wrapped up in the governments machinations, and Mission, another freethinking revolutionary from Silo 18. They’re stories run parallel, but with little significance. The exploration of Silo 1 starts promising. Howey introduces cryogenic stasis to bring Donald into the present timeline, but the reasoning for the stasis (at least given to Donald) is bizarre. Freezing people to do intervals of six month shifts doesn’t sound effective, especially if you’re going to also wipe their memories too. How the Silo with the continuously thawed-out people with memory problems are supposed to effectively commandeer the other 49 silos is anyone’s guess. Howey does a decent job of incorporating these new elements into the world of Wool, but lacks an exciting vehicle in the story to showcase them. After reading, I’m not sure what would be lost if I’d found out this information from Jules or Lukas in Wool, and that’s the core problem I have with Shift: how inessential it feels. Had Shift began around the 360ish-mark once the events of Wool began to intertwine with Donald’s story, I’d probably be more favourable towards it. That said, I found the entirety of the sections dedicated to Silo 17 superfluous. There’s an excellent book trapped between the pages of Shift, but the book we have is often a slog to get through. ...more |
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Apr 23, 2024
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May 15, 2024
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Apr 23, 2024
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| 0007323115
| 9780007323111
| 0007323115
| 3.98
| 450,835
| Oct 15, 1951
| Jan 01, 2009
|
it was ok
| “All you have heard about Old Narnia is true. It is not the land of Men. It is the country of Aslan, the country of the Waking Trees and Visible N “All you have heard about Old Narnia is true. It is not the land of Men. It is the country of Aslan, the country of the Waking Trees and Visible Naiads, of Fauns and Satyrs, of Dwarfs and Giants, of the gods and the Centaurs, of Talking Beasts.”Aslan creates the world of Narnia, populates it with all these intelligent creatures, and mandates that its rightful rulers can only be human? I mean, after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Pevensie children wander back to our world and abandon Narnia for over a thousand years. The exact fallout of their disappearance on the land’s governance isn’t elaborated on, but whatever the situation, another band of humans eventually take over the land and force the magical natives into hiding. The colonialisation of Narnia is judged purely for its lack of civility to the natives and its eschewing of the True Faith of Aslan. The story of Prince Caspian is about returning the rightful heir of that awful legacy to the throne. Of course, by the time that happens, Caspian has been thoroughly proselytised by the True Faith of Aslan and is more than primed to rule from the story’s perspective. I think my main issue is that I don’t find Caspian to be a compelling character. A large portion of the story is just his backstory, and its about as straightforward as these kinds of story’s get. Caspian is already enamoured by the Narnia of legend by the start of the story. If he held his father’s views and the story was about humbling him, then we’d actually have somewhere to go. As it is, its tediously matter-of-fact. The children help Caspian reclaim his throne, Aslan offers to “relocate” the nonbelievers, and, once again, the children are back in their world. No muss, no fuss, honestly. Prince Caspian lacks the wonder and whimsy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and replaces it with staid politicking. ...more |
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1
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Apr 06, 2024
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Apr 10, 2024
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Apr 10, 2024
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Paperback
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| 1338635174
| 9781338635171
| 1338635174
| 3.96
| 848,463
| May 19, 2020
| May 19, 2020
|
did not like it
| On the whole, he was beginning to weary of the infusion of music into his life. Invasion might be a better word. It seemed to be everywhere these d On the whole, he was beginning to weary of the infusion of music into his life. Invasion might be a better word. It seemed to be everywhere these days: birdsong, Covey song, bird-and-Covey song.The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes gives you a sense of its pretensions before the very first line, right in the epigraph. Ideally, the quote in the epigraph should act as an appetizer. Collins can't even confine herself to one, as she quotes Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Wordsworth and Mary Shelley, mapping out her inspirations and her intentions before we've read a word from her. Instead of a sampling, we’re given a predigested meal. As a prequel to the original trilogy, the story is set around eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow as he’s tasked to mentor a tribute in the tenth annual Hunger Games. The Games are a far cry from the preposterous spectacle of Katniss’s time, and the comparison does this story no favours. For all the issues I have with this book, I find it easy to believe no one would tune in to these Games. Not even the morbidly curious. For nine years the Games have been staged in the same disused stadium. Children are “reaped” and forced to kill each other. Outside of a presumably niche sadist community, it lacks mass appeal, and its poor viewership reflects that. In an attempt to soft reboot the Games, the tenth year adds some notables from the trilogy: a host, mentors, sponsors, interviews and commentary. Its here Collins commits her time to incorporating the idle details from her trilogy. For the most part, these glorified addendum's don't add anything — a few times they induced eye-rolling. For instance, the reaping happens on the 4th of July. Some time is dedicated to debating the function of the Hunger Games, and all that seems to produce is some platitudes about the horrors of human nature. It's an argument Suzanne herself summed up much better in Mockingjay through Plutarch. But that’s the main issue with this book. Without that distinctive flair of pageantry and spectacle, the Hunger Games doesn't work. Not as commentary, and definitely not as entertainment. They come across rote and just another box Collins has to tick in her Hunger Games universe. Not unlike this prequel as a whole. The Games last over just a hundred pages and are grueling to get through. We’re stuck in Snow’s perspective and his static shot of the arena, while most of the tributes have squirreled away in tunnels the Capitol doesn’t even try to flush them out of until we’ve sunk into outright tedium. Without the Games, all that’s left is Snow’s arc. He goes from a proud, resentful young man to one with a body count. Essentially, Snow is not an interesting character, and the perfunctory insights into his psychology don’t merit their own book. “You’ve no right to starve people, to punish them for no reason. No right to take away their life and freedom. Those are things everyone is born with, and they’re not yours for the taking.”While Snow might be boring, Sejanus is genuinely awful. His contribution for five hundred pages is to self-righteously state the obvious — just in case the trilogy didn’t accomplish that — again, and again, and again. The first part of this books title — songbirds — is represented by Lucy Gray, the District 12 tribute Snow has to mentor. Lucy is a singer, and she sings a lot in this book. At the definite risk of stating the obvious, music doesn’t translate fantastically in the medium of books. So much of what makes a song, the key and the melody, must be left to the readers imagination. It’s just awkward poem recitals. By the time the Games have ended, there’s still two hundred pages, and the sheer overindulgence on display has to be marveled at. We get several renditions of The Hanging Tree song, as well as the incident that inspired it, because of course we do. The folklore-ish element of the songs origins in Mockingjay gone. Snow and Lucy’s last interaction is a comedy of presumptions on Snow’s part. It’s hilarious to read over three paragraphs his mounting paranoia and conclusions. I can personally say I have next to no idea what Lucy’s intention was. Maybe that says more about my disinterest in the “love” story between the two, because Collins wasn’t hiding her intentions. At every turn, Snow referred to Lucy as a possession. At the same time, Lucy’s sincerity is also up for questioning, but I just don’t care. The fact that the idea for The Hunger Games came from a drunk teenager riffing about an assignment with his friend one night actually makes a lot of sense, though. I’d have preferred fifteen pages about that night than the five hundred of what we got about this. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a redundant prequel with boorish pretensions it had no hope of meeting. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 15, 2024
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Feb 21, 2024
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Feb 15, 2024
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0439023513
| 9780439023511
| 0439023513
| 4.09
| 3,339,993
| Aug 24, 2010
| Aug 24, 2010
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did not like it
| I must now become the actual leader, the face, the voice, the embodiment of the revolution. […] I won’t have to do it alone. They have a whole team I must now become the actual leader, the face, the voice, the embodiment of the revolution. […] I won’t have to do it alone. They have a whole team of people to make me over, dress me, write my speeches, orchestrate my appearances — as if that doesn’t sound horribly familiar — and all I have to do is play my part.There’s a pervasive bleakness to Mockingjay that definitely won't be as welcoming as the toughened grit of the last two books. Without the titular Games, without stakes Katniss genuinely cares about and is willing to fight for, the storytelling takes a nosedive. The exploration of Katniss’s mental state in the aftermath of Catching Fire and Districts 13’s use of her in propaganda could reasonably take up twenty to thirty pages without cratering the pace. Instead, its over a hundred and fifty. What compounds this is Collins need to handhold the reader. I accepted the CliffNotes breakdown of The Hanging Tree song as a necessary evil, but when everyone is in lockdown during a raid in District 13 and Katniss is playing with Buttercup, this line felt more like an annotation than a part of the prose: It’s on the third night, during our game, that I answer the question eating away at me. Crazy Cat becomes a metaphor for my situation.I swear, teenagers aren’t as stupid as you think they are, and even if they do miss this intricate metaphor, it’s much better rediscovering it in a reread some time later than having it broke down like they’re being lectured by a teacher. The same goes for the near-constant references to the Games in the latter half of the novel. What’s bizarre about it is how Collins seems to get confused in her own metaphor here. The pods, the televised count of notable deaths — all the elements that comprise the Games don’t work outside of that construct. I know its The Hunger Games trilogy, but the Games and Total War aren’t remotely comparable and its genuinely disheartening watching Collins try to fit a square peg in a round hole. It’s impossible to be the Mockingjay. Impossible to complete even this sentence. Because now I know that everything I say will be directly taken out on Peeta.There’s a line about how Plutarch “sees the forest for the trees”, how he’s focused on the bigger picture as everyone else frets in the weeds, and its actually this perspective that the book is sorely lacking. Regardless of what Finnick and Katniss think, this isn’t the 76th Hunger Games. It’s a brutal, catastrophic war between the districts and the Capitol, with casualties far exceeding 23. Unless the wounded are bleeding out right in front of her, the stakes remain what will or won’t happen to Peeta, and its maddening. The revolution is in full swing and contrary to the way the trilogy frames it, resistance doesn’t live or die on every breath of a figurehead. Which brings me to the actual main players: Coin and Snow. I really hate how Collins has them be the sole representative of each side. A rebellion and the Capitol need legions of willing participants and a complex political apparatus to function, but the way Collins depicts it, its just the two of them behind their own console fighting each other. This poor worldbuilding burdens Snow and Coin with every atrocity committed on each side with the simplest of strokes, and I just really hate it. What makes this more frustrating is how Collins has the perfect opportunity to shed some light onto Snow when Finnick reveals he was sex trafficked by him. He traded his body for secrets and reveals salacious details about powerful people in the Capitol and Snow’s own rise to power — and its here of all places she decides to just surmise what he says in a few back-breaking paragraphs. Its a telling moment where Collins is hopping over the gaps in her shoddy worldbuilding. Shockingly, I actually enjoyed Gale this time. He’s been a fringe character throughout the trilogy, but his turn to merciless radical is probably the most interesting arc for me, personally. He embodies and emboldens fiercely sympathetic sentiments that inspire (but don’t justify, of course) the brutalities of the resistance, and yet, like Coin, the moral equivalence Collins tries to make between Coin’s actions and Snow’s are grossly misjudged. The oppressor and the oppressed cannot be judged under the same standards. One is actively suppressing a people, while the other is attempting to resist that suppression. Which is ultimately why this book falls apart for me. Coin suggesting they stage one final “symbolic” Games for the children of the Capitol. Coin can be a manipulative and bloodthirsty leader and still not be Snow, but Collins didn’t actually want to spend time disecting Coin’s philosophy and leadership style. She just had Coin suggest another Games so the reader knows for certain that she’s just as bad — or even worse — than Snow. If it seems I haven’t addressed Katniss much, its because she doesn’t do much of consequence. Her main contribution here is fabricating a secret mission to kill Snow that gets about seven people killed (none of whom are Snow). It’s a mortifying waste of lives and Katniss is one hundred percent to blame for it. The pep talk she receives after is the kind of stretch that would tear ligaments. And then, after exactly two conversations, she assassinates Coin in public. What legitimate grievances Katniss has with Coin can be tackled through the, hopefully, burgeoning political process that’s been promised. Because remember, Katniss’s case against Coin is largely hearsay. And not just hearsay from just anyone, but from Snow, a dying old man not above child murder, and whose been actively trying to kill her. It makes perfect sense to me why Snow is laughing in the end. He pulled the perfect coup, during his own execution no less. He manipulated Katniss into killing the one person he could be sure would lead to her own execution. What is or isn’t true isn’t the point. Besides, the fog of war is still thick. Katniss deciding Coins fate with a handful of conversations and no proof, condemning Coin for what she could potentially do rather than what she knows she’s done, is just not something I can respect. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 13, 2024
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Feb 15, 2024
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Feb 13, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 0451461045
| 9780451461049
| 0451461045
| 3.97
| 7,572
| Sep 05, 2006
| Jan 01, 2006
|
it was ok
| The laws of nature were only laws so long as nature intended them to be. I wasn’t sure where we stood anymore.In a genre overstuffed with world-e The laws of nature were only laws so long as nature intended them to be. I wasn’t sure where we stood anymore.In a genre overstuffed with world-ending scenarios, Caine’s take on the apocalypse is fairly unique. In a universe of Djinn and magical humans of different elemental persuasions, the calamity is Mother Nature waking up from her eons of slumber. Up until now, the Wardens have only contended with the nightly stirrings of Mother Nature; if she wakes up, life as humanity knows it is over. Firestorm has Jo dealing with the fallout of that imminent awakening: earthquakes, tsunamis, firestorms wreck havoc at an exponential rate, sending the remaining Warden’s scrambling. Having lost the Djinn, the Wardens aren’t even at their full capabilities — and in that one respect, I have less than zero sympathy for them. Sadly, that doesn’t mean the Djinn are free. The Mother’s taken their reins. I’ve never really liked the idea of sentient storms, and the personification of Mother Nature is no different. The issue for me is how goofy any interactions are bound to be. For the first hundred pages, Jo races to Seacasket to speak to an Oracle, who, presumably can speak to the Mother. The “conversation” is just the Oracle projecting out images of humanity being awful and Jo agreeing, but arguing "we try not to be awful all the time". How the Oracle immediately shuts her down is too funny, even if I’m about 99.9 per cent sure it wasn’t suppose to be. With open-world game logic, Jo collects herself and focuses on leveling up by doing some smaller scale quests for other Wardens. When that also blows up in her face, we get a surprise appearance from Eamon. Eamon, the psychopathic British guy hellbent on getting a Djinn. He’s kidnapped Jo’s sister as a bargaining chip and his inclusion here is a glorious non-sequitur. It mixes with the apocalyptic stakes like oil and water. It’s a side-plot too removed from the world Caine’s created to work right now. Everything about this diversion is barely serviceable drama that doesn’t even have the decency to conclude here: by the end of the book, Eamon still has Sarah and giving creepy calls to Jo. My Djinn child was getting a full-on inferiority complex. More than human, less than full Djinn. That was a burden I wasn’t sure how to help her carry.David’s taken Jonathan’s place and is too compromised by the Mother to be of much use to Jo. To off-balance his continued absence, we get Imara, David and Jo’s Djinn offspring. Unfortunately Firestorm spends little to no time on Imara, let alone her relationship with Jo, and that wouldn’t be so infuriating had Caine not had Ashan kill her off. There’s a potentially rich parallel between Jo’s nascent motherhood and Mother Nature’s with humanity that is so spectacularly missed, I’m at a loss for what Imara’s inclusion even contributed. Imara is this series greatest missed opportunity. Also, the love triangle rears its head again, and not just in Jo’s internal monologue. Lewis buys Jo an expensive car, loaded with implications, and once David see it, they finally discuss how Lewis is in love with Jo, and how Jo is a little bit in love with Lewis, too. This would have been a worthwhile discussion about three books ago. Now, with David and Jo as committed to each other as possible, it feels borderline petty of David to bring up. It’s the end of the world and Jo’s complicated feelings for Lewis couldn’t matter less. Firestorm is a missed opportunity on several accounts and feels a little too cobbled together. While reading, I could almost feel Caine’s deadline snaking up behind her. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 28, 2023
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Jan 2024
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Dec 28, 2023
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 1660089050
| 9781660089055
| 1660089050
| 3.68
| 399,023
| Jan 13, 2020
| Jan 13, 2020
|
did not like it
|
I didn’t know the plot before I picked up Credence. I just chose it because of the hilariously bad reviews. So I have myself to blame for this one. Ou I didn’t know the plot before I picked up Credence. I just chose it because of the hilariously bad reviews. So I have myself to blame for this one. Our protagonist loses her neglectful parents to suicide, and while in this incredibly vulnerable state, is whisked away to a cabin where her uncle lives. Or, I mean, step-uncle. Within days, Tiernan is sexually assaulted a bunch of times as she’s passed around between her step-uncle and his two sons. By then, I was holding out for an FBI raid of the cabin. That doesn’t happen. What does happen, for hundreds of pages, is incestuous threesomes and individual hook ups. Nothing else happens. If it did, it got lost between when she was torn between her step-cousins or something. I think Douglas writes well (this isn’t Fifty Shades of Grey extremes of bad writing where the sentences themselves are almost as awkward as the sex scenes), but what she chooses to write about — this time, at least — definitely wasn’t for me. I thought this book would be ha-ha bad, not ahhh-ahhh bad. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 19, 2023
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Nov 19, 2023
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Nov 19, 2023
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Paperback
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| 1639731067
| 9781639731060
| 4.70
| 693,863
| Oct 23, 2018
| Feb 14, 2023
|
did not like it
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If I could use one quote to sum up my distaste for the Throne of Glass series, it’d be this from Empire of Storms. Aelin glances over a map of their w If I could use one quote to sum up my distaste for the Throne of Glass series, it’d be this from Empire of Storms. Aelin glances over a map of their world and thinks about how its “so small and breakable”. Rowan, seemingly following her thoughts, has no qualms about her becoming a conqueror because: “You would unify, not pillage and burn.”She imagines bringing these small and breakable places “music and books and culture”, and the fact that this isn’t a villain monologue is staggering. In the end, they playfully put their plans for world-domination on the back-burner, but it still sums the attitude of this series up: the same white savior, manifest destiny bullshit no self-respecting book from the last century should be touting. And now to Kingdom of Ash. Aelin spends a fifth of this book chained up. Normally, a fifth wouldn’t be so terrible, but a fifth of this book is about 250 pages worth of glorified preamble (the book skirts near to a thousand). The atrocious pacing is as much a staple of this series as the needless emphasis on “males” and the apotheosis of Aelin, so it is what it is. Sadly, the plots sense of urgency is nonexistent; for nearly 800 pages this book doesn’t feel like the culmination of a series, and when it does, I’m too exhausted from pages and pages of boring filler to attempt to care. Adding to that is how the battle scenes scattered throughout aren’t given a great sense of geography and objectives, other than, you know: win. The romantic relationships that take up the majority of the page-count are deeply repetitive. After Empire of Storms, a lot of the couples had been dangling over some proverbial cliff, and the resolution is nearly identical for them all. Whatever issues, obstacles, irreconcilable differences — near-death experiences are the cure-all. The emotional immaturity across the board is at first inane, and then intensely boring, but its Aedion that fares the worst. His reasons for being upset with Lysandra were flimsy to begin with, so his behaviour toward her in this book took him from a bland character to one I actively disliked. Somewhere in between all of this, the Thirteen die kamikaze-ing a witch tower. Everything to do with the Wyrdkeys is beyond disappointing. When a book goes on and on about something terrible that’s going to happen — Aelin’s death in this case — 99.9% of the time, it isn’t going to happen. Also, this quote made me burst out laughing: The salt of Dorian’s and Chaol’s tears replaced the salt of Endovier […]That is one of the worst sentences I’ve ever read. Aelin’s final confrontation with Erawan and Meave plays out with a great deal of stilted theatrics and very little actual fighting. There’s an absurd amount of bullshitting; they even go so far as to psychoanalyse each other. I’m just imagining this trio trying to shout petty insults and attempts to manipulate over the battling hordes — and it heads straight into the realm of camp. Which actually makes perfect sense, since the main "inspiration" is Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy — a movie series that revels in camp. Everything from Helm’s Deep, including speeches, the dam bursting in Isengard, and even the interminable ending feature in these pages in one form or another. From what I gleaned, Aelin decides to go the constitutional monarchy route, where she has ultimate sway and influence (and her family is indefinitely lavished with her kingdom’s coin) but with, you know, a dash of democracy. That’s something. The only bright spot is I’m happy for Yrene. She excels at her vocation, gets married to a man she loves (and isn’t tied to in some primeval way), is pregnant with her first child and still gets to save the day. Good for her. Kingdom of Ash is a bloated, repetitive and underwhelming conclusion to a series that seemed to indecisively veer in multiple directions until it gave up and settled for The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy’s greatest hits. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 16, 2023
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Nov 19, 2023
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Nov 16, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 1639731040
| 9781639731046
| 4.27
| 679,304
| Sep 05, 2017
| Feb 14, 2023
|
it was ok
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I went into Tower of Dawn not realising that a) it only includes Chaol and b) that it doesn’t actually add anything to the larger story. This on its o I went into Tower of Dawn not realising that a) it only includes Chaol and b) that it doesn’t actually add anything to the larger story. This on its own isn’t too bad. Combined with the fact that its just as long as Empire of Storms and yet, somehow, even less eventful definitely is. Essentially, Chaol travels to Antica, a land almost entirely inspired by the Mongol empire, in search of allies in the war with Erawen and for treatment for his lower body paralysis. The Southern Continent is portrayed like a beacon of enlightenment in contrast to Erilea. Since Chaol barely gets a snapshot of the goings-on — and then, only in the most prosperous and privileged region — I’m not really sure how to feel about that. Initially, I thought this story was going to be Chaol trying to play politics while solving a mystery to earn the favour of the Khagan, but that plot gets lost in the weeds of who-likes-who. After reading so much Maas, I should know better. It starts with the duo of Chaol and Nesryn; then its Chaol and Yrene as Nesryn is paired with Sartaq, one of the princes (because of course). Both of these pairings are fine but uninteresting, and more to the point, inconsequential. The story of Chaol’s treatment is a mixed bag. While I commend Maas for detailing Chaol’s sense of shame and personal turmoil over being wheelchair-bound, the story never evolves from this. At no point is the prospect of remaining in the chair seriously considered. It’s also telling that nothing happens between Chaol and Yrene until after he regains function in his legs. And then he’s re-paralysed in the climax, only to be quasi-“cured” through Yrene, who makes a deal that takes the concept of codependency to its literal extreme. Maas attempts to have her cake and eat it too, by placing Chaol in a limbo of disability, wholly dependent on Yrene, while simultaneously being able to have Chaol on two feet when needed. Why it took hundreds and hundreds of pages to get there is beyond me. Also, the shapeshifter Nesryn encounters is related to Lysandra, because this series treats its world like a cul-de-sac rather than three continents. With better editing, Tower of Dawn could have been a good novella, rather than an okay book. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 12, 2023
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Nov 16, 2023
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Nov 12, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 1639731024
| 9781639731022
| 4.63
| 819,101
| Sep 06, 2016
| Feb 14, 2023
|
did not like it
| Chaol had mentioned this — months ago. She should have considered it more, that ordinary humans might demand checks against her power. Against the Chaol had mentioned this — months ago. She should have considered it more, that ordinary humans might demand checks against her power. Against the power of the court gathering around her.There’s something so utterly tragic about this quote. Aelin has better reasons than most to understand the need for checks and balances when it comes to power. She's been on both sides of the dynamic as a slave and assassin to the king. Yet, still. Even now. She embodies that inexplicable exceptionalism. She has no experience of ruling and governance; she’s not even twenty, and has spent her time in exile killing people at the behest of others and languishing in luxury. Her sanctified bloodline doesn’t undo that reality, or at least, it shouldn't. At this stage, my expectations for this series are fairly low, so simply having a character like Darrow to offer an astute reality check to Aelin is wonderful. Game-changing. Revelatory. Best three pages in the whole series. While, obviously, this is as close as we get to grappling with these issues, I'm glad someone voiced them. Even if Aelin spends that time listening to Darrow posturing violently: Darrow went on before Aelin could speak or incinerate the room.Hundreds of pages later, Aelin does acknowledges Darrow’s point, shockingly, if only to then continue on as if she didn’t. It’s more than I expected, so there’s that. Aside from all my particular misgivings with this series, I'll admit I rarely get into the fantasy royalty crap. Aragorn’s ascension to the throne in Return of the King always felt too neat to me. Bloodline over experience, seniority, or a modicum of self-determination for those being ruled, always rubbed me the wrong way. It’s just not a trope I like, so teasing me with a little reality check here and there is exciting, but I know Aelin’s rule will still be a fairytale of a “rightful” ruler restoring a kingdom to its former glory in the end. It took three books, but I got there: I started to enjoy Manon’s chapters. Having her go rogue was exactly the direction I wanted her story to go, even if it is at the expense of another coven once again. Its one thing to trample on others for her own ambitions, but doing so for pretty-boy Dorian just felt wrong. Whatever entertainment I got from her was completely destroyed when it was revealed Manon was actually the last heir of royalty, too. Just like Aelin. Nearly everybody is royalty and gorgeous and powerful and it all starts to blur together. Empire of Storms is the largest book in the series so far and it's inundated with the exact same romances. Lorcan and Elide are just Rowan and Aelin sped-up, Aedion and Lysandra feel like Maas just pairing the spares, and Dorian and Manon are just a variation of Dorian and Celaena if they’d been the endgame couple. Its exhaustive and the “plot” feels lost in the gaps between. Worst of all, romance has a discombobulating effect on everyone. Aedion, who has dedicated his life to Aelin and restoring her to the throne, becomes furious over Aelin (inadvertently) putting Lysandra in harms way. Forgetting that he’s known Lysandra five minutes, the fickleness of this moment is devastating to his characterisation. And it doesn’t just happen to Aedion. Rowan’s unswerving allegiance to Aelin makes him a completely different character, similar to how Lorcan eventually is with Elide. Unlike their teenage love interests, Lorcan and Rowan are hundreds of years old, with a greater understanding of themselves and the world. With countless previous relationships, yet they act like children shaping their identities to their partners. Worse still, Mass fully embraces canine imagery to convey this devotion: Rowan gave him a lazy smile but refrained from commenting on the delicate, dark-haired young woman who now held Lorcan’s own leash.Honestly, none of that really matters, it just pisses me off. What does matter is how it takes six hundred pages for this door-stopper to give any answers, and the answers it gives are ripped straight from The Prince’s Tale chapter in Deathly Hallows. Aelin is just a horcrux, or in this case, an essential part of the Wyrdkeys and its her death that is needed to end things. Ghostly Elena is Dumbledore, the manipulative architect, Nehemia is Snape, Aelin is Harry and I’m exhausted. Whatever positive feelings I could drudge up for this entry were obliterated in these derivative chapters. To add insult to injury, the last thirty pages are just reams of exposition for things Aelin was apparently doing behind the scenes, like she isn’t a point-of-view protagonist. Literally hundreds of pages were spent achieving fuck all but setting up romantic couplings. Aelin’s quest for allies, her trepidation about failing and her nigh-prescience and the contingencies she planned — marrying Rowan — that, that should have been Empire of Storms. It’d still be a derivative mess, but it’d be focused. It’d have a clear path to chart out. Instead, we got nearly 700 pages of everyone dragging their feet while flirting with each other. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 04, 2023
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Nov 12, 2023
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Nov 04, 2023
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Hardcover
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my rating |
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| 3.90
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did not like it
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Aug 18, 2024
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Aug 16, 2024
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| 3.68
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did not like it
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Aug 11, 2024
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Aug 10, 2024
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| 3.80
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it was ok
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Aug 05, 2024
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Aug 04, 2024
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| 4.01
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it was ok
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Aug 04, 2024
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Jun 29, 2024
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| 4.49
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it was ok
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Jun 28, 2024
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Jun 25, 2024
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| 4.10
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did not like it
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Jun 22, 2024
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Jun 21, 2024
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| 4.35
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did not like it
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Jun 20, 2024
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Jun 13, 2024
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| 4.39
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it was ok
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Jun 13, 2024
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Jun 09, 2024
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| 4.34
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liked it
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Jun 09, 2024
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Jun 03, 2024
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| 4.26
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it was ok
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Jun 03, 2024
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May 27, 2024
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| 4.24
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liked it
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May 27, 2024
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May 15, 2024
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| 4.12
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it was ok
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May 15, 2024
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Apr 23, 2024
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| 3.98
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it was ok
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Apr 10, 2024
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Apr 10, 2024
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| 3.96
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did not like it
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Feb 21, 2024
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Feb 15, 2024
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| 4.09
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did not like it
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Feb 15, 2024
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Feb 13, 2024
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| 3.97
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it was ok
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Jan 2024
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Dec 28, 2023
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| 3.68
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did not like it
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Nov 19, 2023
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Nov 19, 2023
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| 4.70
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did not like it
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Nov 19, 2023
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Nov 16, 2023
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| 4.27
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it was ok
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Nov 16, 2023
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Nov 12, 2023
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| 4.63
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did not like it
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Nov 12, 2023
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Nov 04, 2023
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