The Traitor Baru Cormorant

The Traitor Baru Cormorant

By Seth Dickinson

Baru Cormorant believes any price is worth paying to liberate her people-even her soul.
When the Empire of Masks conquers her island home, overwrites her culture, criminalizes her customs, and murders one of her fathers, Baru vows to swallow her hate, join the Empire's civil service, and claw her way high enough to set her people free.

Sent as an Imperial agent to distant Aurdwynn, another conquered country, Baru discovers it's on the brink of rebellion. Drawn by the intriguing duchess Tain Hu into a circle of seditious dukes, Baru may be able to use her position to help. As she pursues a precarious balance between the rebels and a shadowy cabal within the Empire, she orchestrates a do-or-die gambit with freedom as the prize.

But the cost of winning the long game of saving her people may be far greater than Baru imagines.

I don't know what I can or should say about Traitor: I liked it well enough, but I did find it losing my attention as I tried to track names, characters, backstories, action.  There are thirteen duchies in Aurdwynn, and even despite the map at the beginning, I wasn't like, super on top of who was who.  Also, and here's the thing: in any book that revolves around betrayals (not any more a spoiler than the title, come on) there's going to be that plots-within-plots feeling that is a little bit expected and a little bit exhausting. Although it's not a surprise to the reader that Baru betrays the rebellion (or, it shouldn't be - if you've picked up on any of the hints, or read the fucking title of the book) Dickinson does a pretty good job still making you feel bad about it.

The plot felt a lot like Red Rising: child of the oppressed somehow infiltrates the ruling class and ends up in a competition/test to prove themselves while also gathering enough power to bring the ruling class down from within.   Traitor deals a lot more with the sticky political things: colonialism, and germ warfare, and economic subrogation, and religious tyranny.  It doesn't want to be an action/thriller, it wants to get at the idea of becoming the very thing you swore to destroy.  What if, in seeking to undo the crime done to you, you commit those very crimes against someone else? What good is revenge when you have already killed everything you meant to save?

The pace of the first section is pretty quick, as Baru makes it from island to school to posting to uncovering and imploding a rebel plot fairly quickly, but we spend more time in the later sections, where Baru first infiltrates the (newest) rebellion and then helps to win it, which I felt started to drag a little, if only because of the aforementioned need to remember names, backstories, action, and plots.  It's possible some of the convolution will pay off in later installments.  It can be so tricky to review firsts in a series that way.  I still remember JK Rowling promising big payoffs and answers to mysteries raised in the first couple of books that kind of fizzled out by the time she finished the seventh (i.e. why does Harry Potter have so much money in his vault, and I am so unsatisfied by the answer.  We waited ten years to find out his dad is just rich, really?).

I read the whole thing in one go, but a few days out, I'm just not feeling the need to read the sequel right now, which is a bad sign for me finishing the (forthcoming) quartet.  I think you get back to this idea of: how much time do you want to spend in a mind that is this unhappy, and in a world which is this difficult and unpleasant?  Even Baru's successes were in service to a greater tragedy, and there's a point at which it's just not that fun.  I enjoy a good revenge story - I'm very excited to be re-reading The Count of Monte Cristo for my final book - but Baru so far is unrelenting misery, and the reviews for The Monster Baru Cormorant sound like more of the same.  When are we going to get REVENGEEEEE?? Would I practice revenge in real life? No.  Do I want a revenge fantasy while Baru seems hell-bent on a realistic look at what revenge does to a person? YES.


One of the things I didn't like about Wonder Woman when it came out was this scene where they're trying to hold a war council and talking about sacrificing a town, and Diana's like, "How can you not try to save absolutely everyone?" which is such an unrealistic attitude to have in war.  Contrast that with The Imitation Game, which I just watched yesterday, when they realize they have to lie about cracking Enigma in order to prevent the Germans from changing their cipher, thereby sacrificing loads of people they could have saved for the greater good.  I appreciated that as being both a more realistic and a harder (and therefore more heartfelt) choice.  It's easy to just indiscriminately help people, it's harder when you have to decide who you will let die.  Here, Baru takes the stance that everyone is worth sacrificing, which I think tips the spectrum too far in the other direction - too easy when you only have one thing you want to save, you know it will always win. Baru is sort of like the anti-Wonder Woman in that respect.

We'll see how I go - I might end up waiting until the whole series is published and trying again then.

25: A Debut Novel

Lysistrata

Lysistrata

By Aristophanes

Translation by Douglass Parker

The bravest of women, Lysistrata, determines that there is only one way to end war forever. She calls a convention for women only and makes them swear to give up love. Dressed for seduction and armed to the teeth, they beat off their men and refuse to sleep with them until the fighting has ceased.  But, no matter how strong the will, the flesh is weak, and it is impossible to keep the women from joining the men. Backsliding is an ever-present danger.

To an Athens bereft by military disaster, as to the world today, LYSISTRATA stands as an impassioned plea for peace.  With a comic realism that borders on despair, Aristophanes observes that only lust is strong enough to drive out war.

Oh my god, I did not investigate my library's selection of ancient Greek texts, and just picked whichever translation popped up first (it also had a bright pink cover, and fun illustrations which were adorable) and, well,  the translation is not bad, I mean, he's obviously tried for like, rhymes and idioms and stuff, which is why you would never guess from just reading the play that the translator is also, clearly, insane.  I mean:

Even the most rabid advocate of the wide circulation of the classics in any form must blanch slightly at the broadcast misconception that this play is a hoard of applied lubricity.  Witness its latest American publication bowdlerized in reverse, nestled near some choice gobbets from Frank Harris'  autobiography and a slick and curious quarterly called Eros now under indictment.

What in the ever-loving fuck, you may be thinking. Or who the fuck is Frank Harris? The thoughts also crossed my mind.  But I mean, what the fuck is this:

71. The ensuing reconciliation scene, with its surrogate sexuality, is one of the most curious in Aristophanes. It is not lyric; yet both its diction, oddly diffuse and redundant, and it's meter, a paeonic variation on a common trochaic dialogue measure which paradoxically makes it much more regular, seem to call for extensive choreography. I have tried to hedge my bet by stilting the English and employing any regular scheme depending heavily on off rhymes.

I feel like we're getting further away from the goal of his translation, i.e., making it so people who speak English can understand this.   

Beyond all that, the play itself (and the translation) is charming.  It's very short, and involves a lot of jokes and puns about penises, as all best plays do, although it's actually more focused on the interplay between the women and men than it is coming up with new idioms for sex (I see you there Shakespeare, Aristophanes doesn't have a patch on you).  As I mentioned before, Parker does a pretty good job making ancient Greek rhyme, sound modern and make sense, but he has this one weird thing that drove me crazy: he uses "American mountain dialect" for the Spartan characters, which has the effect of completely stopping the rhythm of the page.  For example:

Kleonike: Where did you find that group?

Lysistrata: They're from the outskirts.

Kleonike: Well, that's something.  If you haven't done anything else, you've really ruffled up the outskirts.

Myrrhine: Oh, Lysistrata, we aren't late, are we? Well, are we? Speak to me!

Lysistrata: What is it, Myrrhine? Do you want a medal for tradiness? Honestly, such behavior, with so much at stake...

Myrrhine: I'm sorry.  I couldn't find my girdle in the dark.  And anyway, we're here now.  So tell us all about it, whatever it is.

Kleonike: No, wait a minute.  Don't begin just yet.  Let's wait for those girls from Thebes and the Pelopennese.

Lysistrata: Now there speaks the proper attitude.  And here's our lovely Spartan.  Hello Lampito dear.  Why darling, you're simply ravishing! Such a blemishless complexion - so clean, so out-of-doors!  And will you look at that figure - the pink of perfection!

Kleonike: I bet you could strangle a bull.

Lampito: I calklate so.  Hit's fitness whut done it, fitness and dancin'.  You know the step? Foot it out back'ards an' toe yore twitchet.

Kleonike: What beautiful bosoms!

Lampito: Shuckins, whut fer you tweedlin' me up so? 

I hate it so much, I can't even tell you.  It's one thing for the director of the play to make the decision to have all the Spartans talk like the worst parody of a hillbilly from a Saturday morning cartoon,  but to have the dialogue be twisted and yanked and worse: written in dialect, drives me nuts.  I'd be interested to see if more recent translations would do the same, since I feel like that kind of tone-deaf writing is not in vogue anymore.

I bitch, I bitch, but there's actually very few Spartans, and you can certainly skip the preface and footnotes if you want, and the experience of reading the play is only minorly diminished by the issues I describe.  And for a dusty, centuries-old Greek play, it's actually pretty fun.

And finally, I realized I'd forgotten to mention the prompt: I went for "Women: you can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em" and although apparently this sentiment predates even Aristophanes, I felt this was sufficiently old enough to count as its inspiration!
 
49: A Book That Has Inspired A Common Phrase Or Idiom

Ten Second Reviews

The Best Lies

By Sarah Lyu

Remy's life changes when she meets Elise.  Charismatic Elise, who is determined to right the wrongs of the world, and bring Remy along with her on her quest for justice.  But Elise's history is darker than Remy realizes - and when Remy tries to get away from Elise's plans, the night ends with Elise killing Remy's boyfriend Jack.  But is Elise the aggressor or the victim, or both? This one had some promise.  I thought it was going to be like a real Basic Instinct or Single White Female (note that I haven't actually seen either of these movies, but in today's cultural world, do you even have to, to know what they're about?) but it turned out to just be sad, a tragedy about an abused child who winds up lashing out and then taking a really wild left turn into murder.  Even though the book leads with the shooting, it didn't feel earned by the end.  As ominous and weird as Elise was, the fact that she was actually being beaten bloody by her father meant that whatever else she was, she wasn't a liar, and she wasn't ridiculous for wanting justice/revenge. So the finale where she kills Jack because he threatened to tell people she set a house on fire if she didn't let Remy detach, just feels really out of character.  Not to mention that I cannot for the life of me figure out what any of these people see in Remy.  At several points, I thought the reveal was going to be that Remy was actually the killer, because she was so frigging obsessed with whatever person happened to be cool in her direction most recently. 

Carry On

By Rainbow Rowell

So sue me, I ended up being curious enough from Fangirl to read Rowell's take on Harry Potter fanfic.  In some ways, it's a lot like In Other Lands, another post-HP take on the idea of a child being indoctrinated into a magical school and growing up and making friends (and making out, which is also very important).  Carry On did not thrill me? I mean, you kind of know where everything is going, and who the "Big Bad" is and frankly, things don't happen at all until Baz appears, 150 pages in to a 500 page book.  Because we're meant to think this is the last of a series, there's a lot of describing previous years' adventures, however, because this isn't in fact the last of a series, none of the adventures can be significant at all to this years' adventure, so they're a little bit pointless.  As is the character of Agatha.  I think I sort of get what Rowell was going for, a reversal of the idea that the Chosen One has a Chosen Girlfriend, but Agatha's role seemed limited to being the Debbie Downer of the group - just real unhappy, and ironically enough, existing only to be moved around by the other characters and her life threatened.

In the end, I felt oddly let down by the ending - leaving your magical protagonist powerless and with wings and a devil's tail which have to be made invisible every twelve hours, and permanent magical deadzones seems kind of a downer to me. I don't know if the forthcoming sequel would solve any of those problems, but after reading Carry On, I have little interest in finding out.  It's just not my bag.

The Woman in the Window

The Woman in the Window

By: A.J. Finn

Anna Fox lives alone—a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors.

Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother, their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble—and its shocking secrets are laid bare.

What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this diabolically gripping thriller, no one—and nothing—is what it seems.

I alluded to this slightly in my last review, but it bears repeating: any mystery in which I can guess most of the major plot points well in advance of the reveals is just not that good.  I mean, I'm definitely not proud of this, but I am like, consistently terrible about figuring out whodunit.

I was also semi-primed I suppose by having read Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine which revolves around [SPOILER] the reveal that Eleanor's mother, with whom Eleanor has weekly conversations, is actually dead, not in jail, but it seemed very obvious very quickly that actual conversations with your separated husband and child just don't go like that.  It was also perfectly clear to me that Grandma Lizzie was suspicious and that Ethan was no good, particularly (in the last case) after Dr. Fox basically accused everyone, and it came out that she was an overly medicated drunk with PTSD, and yet Ethan, a high school aged boy, still wanted to hang out with her. Yeah, right, I'm sure that's what all the cool kids are up to, checking on their looney tunes neighbors and crying gently into their shoulders.  I'm not sure why Grandma Lizzie pinged my radar, maybe I just have a natural suspicion and hatred of supposedly motherly elderly women.  She just set my back up right away, and honestly, I don't know if it was intentional on Finn's part, which is probably a bad sign.

I originally had this on my list (along with White Fang) and that article about how nuts A.J. Finn is came out in the New Yorker, and I was kinda leaning away from it, because a psuedo-Mr. Ripley is not someone I really want to get behind, but then I figured I would rather read this than White Fang.  Joke's on me!

So, the good parts: it did have some good action, although I ended up skimming a bit. Here's the thing, I don't know if I can even be impartial, because when you know how it ends, and the author's just like, circling endlessly, you start to lose interest, because there's no tension there.  You have a limp rope.  So the whole time the Dr. is telling Grandma Lizzie what happened that fateful night, I was like, "Get to the point!" She unspools it over like, two or three chapters.  And the beats in the story are so well-trod, I was like, yes, we've reached the point where no one believes her, but then she's going to find an incontrovertible piece of evidence and somehow wind up in a one-on-one confrontation with the killer.

The only part I needed explained was who Jane Russell actually was, and why she would pretend to be Jane Russell.  Which, sure, okay, a long lost natural mother who just wants to be part of the family, but like, if she was doing so well and was off the drugs, did she like, forget to tell friends she was planning to stake out her son's house for awhile? No one reported her missing?


Haha, I was wondering why the German version on Amazon was rated so much lower than the English language version, and apparently it is because people don't understand that a book advertised as "The Woman in the Window - Was hat sie wirklich gesehen?" may not be 100% in English.  Don't lower the rating just because you don't know German when you see it, ma'am.

Woman is basically Rear Window without Jimmy Stewart, Alfred Hitchcock, and Grace Kelly, which is to say, Rear Window without the parts that made it great.  And while Rear Window has all the non-murdery neighborhood drama to dip into every so often, Woman basically focuses 100% of its attention next door.  It is so dangerous to ape a classic, and in this case, all the comparisons do Woman no favors: it's definitely second rate.

 01: A Book Becoming A Movie In 2019  (See Black Future Month for explanation)

The Dry

The Dry

By Jane Harper

After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke’s steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the crime. But now more than one person knows they didn’t tell the truth back then, and Luke is dead.

Amid the worst drought in a century, Falk and the local detective question what really happened to Luke. As Falk reluctantly investigates to see if there’s more to Luke’s death than there seems to be, long-buried mysteries resurface, as do the lies that have haunted them. And Falk will find that small towns have always hidden big secrets.

I hate prompts that require you to evaluate the book before you've read it!  I'm calling this one done, mostly because I could see this as a movie, and whether or not I think it should be a movie, well, I'm not going to ponder that one too deeply.

The conditions for reading it certainly helped me appreciate it: a warm summer day, out on a patio with a glass of rose sangria, waiting for a pizza to be ready for pick up.   You can read almost anything in those conditions and love it.

In this particular case, I very much enjoyed the beginning, felt like the middle was drawn out a bit too long, and was pretty satisfied with the ending.  Unlike the next book for review, I did not guess either answer to the book's two mysteries: What actually happened when Ellie disappeared and was found two days later drowned, and what actually happened twenty years later, when Luke's wife and child are found shot, and Luke dead with a shotgun next to him?

I liked the solution to the current day mystery, as it pretty much made sense and there were some clues, but the mystery of Ellie's disappearance felt like a side trip through irrelevantland. I understand that it added confusion  and tension to the main storyline, but every time we revisited the question, or dealt with Ellie's abusive father and redneck cousin, I got a little bit bored again.  It never rang quite true that the assumption that either Aaron or his father were involved because of a paper with their last name on it, despite their alibis, the ruling of suicide would be so bad as for them to literally pack up and never come back - I don't know, maybe I'm just not giving rural Australia enough credit for being backwards, paranoid, and superstitious.

I'm not going to lie, I was hoping that that the incredible drought (I mean, the novel is called The Dry, after all) was going to have some greater relevance to the story, like, they find new clues about the drowning because the river level is so unnaturally low.  You know how it is, nothing makes you unhappier as a reader than doing plot better than the author.  Not that it would be better, but certainly more dramatic!

Anyway, I enjoyed this enough I would read more by her (and my mother said she's got all of Harper's books, which is a strong recommendation in and of itself - she suggested I would enjoy The Lost Man as it's about a land dispute, which you know gets the old blood going, and sadly enough, she's probably right) and I did like the setting, which makes it at least a little off the well-trodden mystery path. 


04: A Book That Should Be Turned Into A Movie

Ten Second Reviews

Force of Nature

By Jane Harper

Five women hike into the wilderness on an executive camping retreat.  When only four return, investigator Aaron Falk is concerned that the disappearance of the fifth woman - Alice - may have something to do with her connection to him: she was about to hand over documents as a whistleblower which would have taken the company - and several people hiking with her - down.  This was my least favorite of the Jane Harper books, by a long shot.  As she's done in her other books, the narrative has two tracks: one is the timeline following the discovery of the disappearance, the other the events leading up to it.  Only at the end of both do we know what happened.  Here, the action is just super slow.  We know that Alice doesn't disappear until early Sunday morning, so following everybody from Thursday onward feels really sluggish - especially when we find out - SPOILERS! - that ultimately, the accident had nothing more to do with any ulterior motivations then that Alice was kind of a bitch and everybody was really on edge.  Plus, nothing about Beth's (or Bree's?) subsequent hiding of the body made any sense.  You thought your twin killed someone, so you hauled a corpse twenty feet off the path? That's more or less my two main complaints: very slow paced, and the ultimate solution to the mystery disappointed.  But, as ever, these are well written and Harper does a great sense of place.

The Rosie Result

By Graeme Simsion

This, like Force of Nature, was also the third of sorts, and not my favorite of the bunch.  I did like it, generally, on its own though, so in that respect it's not so similar.  It's the continuation of the The Rosie Project and The Rosie Effect, which told more or less the meeting, and eventual coupling up, of the titular Rosie, and narrator Don, who is (by the end of the third, determinedly so) autistic.   The Rosie Result sort of tracks Don and Rosie's son's progress through a new school, and the question about whether he should be tested for autism/is autistic.  It's not as funny as the first installment, not as sad as the second.  It ends, as the others did, on a very hopeful note.  Don and Rosie's relationship is sturdy and I do think it suffers from the focus being on son Hudson, who is sort of a cypher to Don (and to readers) and not as much on Rosie, who is more down to earth and whose interactions with the more literal Don create the best moments in the series. Overall, nice for completists.

I suppose this is my "Australia" reading day - I hadn't even noticed until I started putting the labels on.  These could not be two more different pieces set in Australia - one is a social comedy about current views on health, disabilities, political correctness and parenting, set in and around the suburbs, the other is a murder/crime thriller set in the bush.