The Iron Will of Genie Lo

The Iron Will of Genie Lo

By F. C. Yee

 

Genie Lo thought she was busy last year, juggling her academic career with protecting the Bay Area from demons. But now, as the Heaven-appointed Guardian of California, she’s responsible for the well-being of all yaoguai and spirits on Earth. Even the ones who interrupt her long-weekend visit to a prestigious college, bearing terrible news about a cosmos-threatening force of destruction in a nearby alternate dimension.
 
The goddess Guanyin and Genie’s boyfriend, Quentin Sun Wukong, do their best to help, but it’s really the Jade Emperor who’s supposed to handle crises of this magnitude. Unfortunately for Genie and the rest of existence, he’s gone AWOL. Fed up with the Jade Emperor’s negligence, Genie spots an opportunity to change the system for the better by undertaking a quest that spans multiple planes of reality along with an adventuring party of quarrelsome Chinese gods. But when faced with true danger, Genie and her friends realize that what will save the universe this time isn’t strength, but sacrifice.

Yes, the story is about a reincarnation of a metal rod from ancient chinese mythology in the body of a Californian teenager.  I know this, and I love it anyway.  Genie Lo is dry and funny and trying desperately to keep her head above water in her home life, college applications, boyfriend problems, and keeping her commune of demons from breaking out and wrecking havoc over the countryside.  

On a college visit, staying with her friend Yunie's cousin, Genie ends up getting enmeshed in several demonic and non-demonic army retreats (drawn to her aura), and joining forces with various gods, in the absence of the jade emperor, to stop the threat and potentially ascend to the throne of heaven.  Genie's got her money on Guanyin, while Quentin is backing his old buddy Guan Yu, with straight-A student type Nezha, and former defeated foe (and emperor's nephew) Erlang Shen rounding out the contenders, and Great White Planet tagging along to keep score.  

It's just a really charming book, and the characters are (mostly) trying their best. It manages to blend the mom's sudden and scary illness/college visit/mysterious absence of jade emperor and new demonic presence really well, although mom's illness got maybe the shortest shrift.  There's obviously themes going on in there about sacrifice and doing the right thing, and there's a scene which perfectly encapsulates the infuriating attitude of those born to invisible privilege. Surprisingly, I think Genie's mom nailed it at the end when she talks about how sometimes we have to accept that we can't control or guarantee the future, and all we can do is keep making the best decisions we can and supporting each other (and also the importance of letting your teenage daughter have a normal college experience, even if is she an ancient magical beating-stick).  I mean, that kind of anxiety is something I still struggle with, and I am much older and less prone to beating people up than Genie is. 

The old characters, particularly Erlang Shen, really got developed and fleshed out.  Erlang Shen become less of a three dimensional villain, what with his explanation for his earlier actions, and his relationships with some of the other characters adding a humane side to him.  As far as the new characters went,Yunie's hilariously deadpan older cousin blew everyone else away, but there wasn't a really sour note.  

The tone of the book wavers somewhere around Avatar: The Last Airbender (which makes sense, since the author's other book is an Avatar book) and Kung Fu Hustle, with the mix of martial arts, comedy, and sudden bursts of warmth and heartfelt interactions.  It's interesting how much happens "offscreen" - Yunie's adventures, and her parents' reconciliation could both have been much longer sections of the book, but we breeze past everything at a pretty good clip, and I didn't mind the recap-style overview, although others might.

The ending tag also really hit the spot for me.  I was honestly not sure if there would be a third in the series, so I was (a) glad to see how things got wrapped up and (b) COMPLETELY surprised by how things got wrapped up - the (SPOILER ALERT) time jump really tugged my heartstrings, the way that they kept working towards rescue and not giving up even years later.  I'm kind of mad though that we didn't get to see Genie in college, and all the stuff in between.  I also forgot about the three versions of the Ruyi Jingu Bang, and thought she already had the cloning power, so it's good that the rescue wasn't supposed to be more built up.  If there ever is a third one, I'm on board.   Especially since they make so many interesting allusions to what happened in the interim! A collection of short stories set in this timeframe would be perfect.

Just as a side note, um, do her mom and dad not notice that she's made of iron and has glowing eyes?  Let's make that one of the short stories!    Come on, do I have to do all the hard work here?

This Must be the Place

This Must be the Place

By Maggie O'Farrell

 

Daniel Sullivan leads a complicated life. A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California, a father he loathes in Brooklyn, and his wife, Claudette, is a reclusive ex–film star given to pulling a gun on anyone who ventures up their driveway. Together, they have made an idyllic life in the country, but a secret from Daniel's past threatens to destroy their meticulously constructed and fiercely protected home. Shot through with humor and wisdom, This Must Be the Place is an irresistible love story that crisscrosses continents and time zones as it captures an extraordinary marriage, and an unforgettable family, with wit and deep affection.

I have no idea why this was on my reading list - I think I must have gotten the impression it was a comedy? I couldn't figure out why it had a waitlist at the library.  And then partway through it, I realized the author is BLOWING UP over her newest book, Hamnet, and she's actually an award-winning literaturist and maybe I should pay attention and learn a little something from reading This Must be the Place, huh.  

Like many other reviewers, I struggled in the first couple sections.  Not because I was having trouble following the story, per se, but because I was struggling to figure out if it would get any better.  I have an entirely rational dislike of average male characters who seem to glide through life thinking they're special in some way, and Daniel Sullivan was just... not my bag.

 I spent the first part of the book getting irritated by Dan's narration, then drawn into Claudette's story, then so aggravated by Dan's cheating-on-his-girlfriend-who-just-had-an-abortion-like-earlier-that-day activities that I spent the next chunk of book actively wishing him ill, and then after he actually does screw up his life (ironically, not because of the situation with his ex-girlfriend, but because his oldest daughter is shot in a random mugging) with depression and alcohol and drugs, ended up wanting him to get back together with Claudette because of how obviously unhappy everyone was when they split up.  Never satisfied! 

I did like the section on Claudette's memorabilia, partly because it was so unexpected, just flipping along and then suddenly you're in the middle of an auction book on a faux celebrity.  I can't imagine how they did all the photos and stuff - are those real magazines? Are those the author's bags? Inquiring minds want to know.  It suddenly became a mixed-media piece and I was here. for. it.  (I don't know how to do those clapping emojis, just imagine them).  I also liked all the different locations, it really was like traveling all over the world. O'Farrell has a real talent for scene setting.

Here's a fun fact: I didn't care about Phoebe at all - not during her narration, not when we find out she died young, and not when her death becomes a huge driving force in the book.  I mean, in a book where you have a famous actress fake her own death and then marry a divorced American who's wandering the countryside with his grandfather's ashes and apparently all of their collective kids are somehow geniuses/extraordinary in their own ways, and you're gonna add a tragic and random shooting death in there too? I feel like we're approaching magical realism, or maybe the opposite, ordinary non-realism.  

 

Does the story give me any insights or thoughts about relationships, between husband and wife, father and child, etc? Not really, all these people are pretty weird, like living in a Wes Anderson movie weird. 

The back of my edition also has a bunch of book group questions, which I normally find to be pretty banal, but in this case were more intriguing, perhaps because the book itself was more obscure? It did ask why we thought O'Farrell included the viewpoints of fairly tertiary or one-off characters (like Dan's mom Theresa, random acquaintance Rosalind, and former lover Timou) and to be honest, I'm not... entirely... sure? I mean, I feel like Timou's was in there to prove a point that he used Claudette for professional success and couldn't do it without her, although frankly, I don't think anything we hear about him in the book really justifies Claudette faking the death of herself and their child and then telling him that he needs to call her brother if he wants to see their son. I mean - so what if he is a deadbeat dad? Just because Ari seems stable enough without him (although how stable can he be, having a kid at 17?) doesn't give you the moral (or legal) right to cut off that relationship.  Plus, I feel like Timou's been punished enough, what with every jackanapes reporter out there asking questions about his disappearing girlfriend instead of his new projects.  I ended up feeling sorry for him and disliking Claudette more, which may or may not have been the point.

As for Rosalind, honestly I'm not real sure, but man did her section make me want to visit the Bolivian salt flats. I have a photo taken there, by Gray Malin, and it's incredible how distinct each color is and how saturated it feels. Rosalind's narration really captured that for me, which is one of those things I think looks easy when you have an extraordinary writer, but is really hard to do, to describe an extraordinary scene in words alone.  People on goodreads say it's to give Dan the push to apologize but honestly, if he hadn't figured that out himself at that point, he's too dumb to be married. 

And Theresa is anyone's guess, although maybe to underscore that she was only a sainted figure for Dan, but was a more complex person than that in life? Again, it has the effect of making Dan look, I dunno, dumber, maybe, for idealizing her (not that she's not a good person, but certainly not this two-dimensional cutout he seems to be living with) and I already thought Dan was pretty dumb, so there. And her fated-for-life thing with that random guy who keeps turning up was weird.  I don't even want to get into it, because this is already a treatise, but COME ON.

Anyway, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would in the beginning, definitely felt like the parts with/about Janks kind of dragged, since they seem to end up kind of as a false lead in the ultimate marital disharmony, thought it was well written at least, and ended up not wanting to re-read it at all.

Dead Voices

Dead Voices

By Katherine Arden

 

Having survived sinister scarecrows and the malevolent smiling man in Small Spaces, newly minted best friends Ollie, Coco, and Brian are ready to spend a relaxing winter break skiing together with their parents at Mount Hemlock Resort. But when a snowstorm sets in, causing the power to flicker out and the cold to creep closer and closer, the three are forced to settle for hot chocolate and board games by the fire.

Ollie, Coco, and Brian are determined to make the best of being snowed in, but odd things keep happening. Coco is convinced she has seen a ghost, and Ollie is having nightmares about frostbitten girls pleading for help. Then Mr. Voland, a mysterious ghost hunter, arrives in the midst of the storm to investigate the hauntings at Hemlock Lodge. Ollie, Coco, and Brian want to trust him, but Ollie's watch, which once saved them from the smiling man, has a new cautionary message: BEWARE.

With Mr. Voland's help, Ollie, Coco, and Brian reach out to the dead voices at Mount Hemlock. Maybe the ghosts need their help--or maybe not all ghosts can or should be trusted.

 

I picked this one up last fall as a fun aside, and I will be darned if it isn't just as good, if not better than, the first in the series, Small Spaces.  Whatever else Ms. Arden is, she's  a fantastic writer of children's horror.  Not only did it manage to create a brand new story with a new wintery location and spookiness factor (ghosts this time, instead of animated scarecrows), it made me really eager to read the next in the series.  It never felt stale or rehashed, not even (Spoiler Alert!) when we discovered that the bad man was the same smiling man who orchestrated the first go-round.  

 It also really worked that the kids remembered what happened in the first book and really tried to learn from it.  They didn't make stupid choices like splitting up or falling for them ghost tricks.  It's a lesson for us all - no matter how much you know, you can still sometimes be surprised by a supernatural demon and a bunch of old ghosts.  And honestly, even though I knew FOR SURE Mr. Voland was bad news, the lead up didn't aggravate me, but made me question whether I was reading the room right (I was), so it wasn't annoying that the kids weren't more cautious.  

It did throw me a little bit when we started switching narrators between Coco and Ollie, mostly because (AS ALWAYS) I forgot which one was which since I read the first in the series, and I was like, "I remember the main character being... different".  But  we get that wrapped up, and hopefully Brian comes into his own in the next one. 

The ending was also much clearer and less vague than Small Spaces - the whole thing felt really tight, what with the initial scene setting, the trip through the mirror, and the final battle.  Not as much confusion about who was who or how Ollie "won" or anything like that. I told my husband without any shame at all that I was really enjoying this children's horror book, and while I'm sure he thought I was being ridiculous, this is becoming one of my favorite series.  I stalked the author's blog and I'm pretty sure the next one is set in the summer with a LAKE, and it's like, the use of all these classic horror tropes to create this is so thrilling.  I honestly wouldn't have thought it could be done without becoming trite, or cliche, or expected, but it definitely is working so far.

 

Redwall

Redwall

By Brian Jacques

What can the peace-loving mice of Redwall Abbey do to defend themselves against Cluny the Scourge and his battle-seasoned army of rats? If only they had the sword of Martin the Warrior, they might have a chance. But the legendary weapon has long been forgotten-except, that is, by the bumbling young apprentice Matthias, who becomes the unlikeliest of heroes.

I used to love the Redwall series, it was so popular when I was growing up.  Well you know what they say: never meet your heroes, or in this case, never re-read your childhood books as an adult.  I spent the first half of this book NOT GETTING IT, like "If they have horses and hay carts, that implies humans, but if humans, then how did no one notice a GIANT ABBEY populated by woodland creatures?  How does this abbey hold mice plus a badger plus a hedgehog plus a flock of sparrows plus a fox plus a pond full of enormous fish plus who know what all else? Are the doors large enough for Constance to fit through, and if so, how come they aren't too heavy for the mice? Do they have sets of nested doors? How come no one could climb the walls of the abbey except a super special rat thing? Are the walls made of sheet metal?  Mice are great climbers.  Better than people!  How come there is a GIANT SNAKE roaming through the woods and no one knows this??? Or "remembers", since I guess he's passed into myth status. 

Since woodland mice's lives are like, one year long (three in captivity), how long has this abbey been around, really?  Do they have to switch abbots like, every six months?  And for that matter how old is Matthias? He's running around in giant sandals (which, were those ever fixed or did he miraculously become more agile?) and then in like, 48 hours he's taken over as military commander (with no qualifications - by the way, and I know this is a digression of a digression, but all of their best military minds go off on separate side adventures out of the abbey without telling anyone! How is this responsible leadership?! Constance, Jess, Basil Stag Hare, Matthias, all just go traipsing through the countryside on guerilla missions of dubious importance on their own whims.  Man oh man.  They're all getting demoted when I'm done).

And don't get me started on what a dick Matthias is - he throws the sparrow off a roof just to prove he can, he's super rude to the GUOSIM when they're arguing about whether or not to help him, like, you don't fucking deserve these strangers' help, especially when you're both rude, and it's a wholly unnecessary attack on an adder which (spoiler alert!) ends in two shrew deaths. Not to mention the fact that you've spent days? weeks? who knows! on this quest to find a sword.  Just take one off a dead rat!

And don't get me started on how gross it is that the abbot is like, "Matthias! You're a great warrior now and you shouldn't be a monk!  And Cornflower, you're a girl, you seem fertile, marry Matthias!" EEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWW! I mean, she does have a minor battle role, but mostly she's there for Matthias to eyefuck and then bring soup to all the defenders of the wall.

This was originally supposed to be a Ten Second Review but I got carried away, as you can see.   Is Redwall fun? Yes, absolutely, who doesn't want to read about foxes and weasels fighting mice and sparrows and moles?  Is it hilarious and adorable to picture mice wearing widdle monk robes? Awwww, yes. Does Jacques take some creative liberties in deciding which species are going to be "naturally bad" and which good? Uh, YES.  I mean, it mostly breaks down along carnivorous lines (with the possible exceptions of Gingevere and Julian, the cat and barn owl, respectively) which makes some sense from the perspective of a mouse, but wasn't this the whole problem people had with Slytherin house in Harry Potter? If you put a bunch of kids in a room and tell them they're bad, of course you'll end up with evil children!  I mean, where's the love for the poisonous snakes of the world? Well, in reality they're a protected species because they're in decline over the UK (perhaps due to homicidal mice), so that's good.  But yes, Redwall  is a little black and white about these things, so if you're older than, say, fifteen, it might annoy you.

Also, side note, but there are a LOT of gruesome deaths for a children's book.  More pirate deaths than in Treasure Island! (Note, this may not be factual, because a lot, like a lot of pirates die in Treasure Island too. A pirate's life indeed: scurvy and early death for the entertainment of children!). Some of the "goodies" die too, including a particularly sad death by fox burglar that I vaguely remembered was coming, but was still heart-breaking.  Just goes to show, there's no good fox but a dead fox (rolls eyes)!

But this series is, as I said, pretty fun, and the riddles are always a high-point, along with the adventure. My favorites were always the otters (who make a blink and you'll miss them appearance here with their slingshots), so I most enjoyed Pearls of Lutra even though it was very unconnected with the main Mossflower storylines.

Ten Second Reviews

Men to Avoid in Art and in Life

By Nicole Tersigni

This was like the froth on a cup of coffee: fun to contemplate, but when it came to drinking the stuff, basically intangible.  I like the idea, but maybe it's better enjoyed on a scrolling read, rather than in book form.  There's some attempt to match topic and art, but not always successful.  Like I said, briefly enjoyed, and briefly remembered.  

Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery

Edited by Christopher Golden and Rachel Autumn Deering

Well, first of all, it's very hard to compete with the gold standard of witch stories, which is, obviously, Nine Witch Tales, by, ahem, "Abby Kedabra", published in 1968. But there's always room for second place! 

Okay, I know this is dumb, but I liked the length of the stories.  And I know, I know, that sounds like I'm damning with faint praise, but honestly, if I'm reading short stories, one of things that bugs me is when I get like, five twenty-page stories, and then like, one seventy-page story. That is no longer a story, sir, that is a novella.  Also, as much as I like shakin' things up (to wit: very little) I much prefer orderliness.  Anyway, to the actual review!

Some good ones, some not so good ones. Of the ones that stuck with me, I have to call out Sarah Langan's The Night Nurse, which is definitely NOT something I should have been reading as a pregnant person and Tananarive Due's Last Stop on Route Nine was chilling and spooky, and took me down a Dozier School for Boys hole, which is where I thought the story was going (it wasn't but it was still satisfyingly spooky).  Angela's Slatter's Widows' Walk, Hillary Monahan's Bless Your Heart, Ania Ahlborn's The Debt, Chesya Burke's Haint Me Too (which felt inspired by Beloved, at least in the beginning style), and Theodora Goss', How to Become a Witch-Queen,were all above average, enjoyable witchery stories.  

I felt a bit let down by Helen Marshall's The Nekrolog, and Kristin Dearborn's The Dancer, both of which were really great, but wrapped up without a satisfying resolution. Both felt like they were excerpts from a much larger universe, but even thought the world was interesting and well-done, I wanted something more complete in my stories.

I also feel like calling out Rachel Caine's Home: A Morganville Vampires Story, and Amber Benson (yes, of Buffy fame)'s This Skin, which were my least favorites, by far. Home was part of a larger universe thing, and I don't know if the people were more sympathetic if you read the books, but in the story, this witch comes to town, looking for a drop of blood from the vampires who murdered her and her husband in order to resurrect her husband and her murderers basically are huge assholes to her, basically being all "she's a terrible person, blah blah blah" even though they're the ones who killed her and frankly should be expecting revenge. And then she doesn't even do anything that bad to them, she just leaves once she gets the blood.  This Skin was a let down, again with a protagonist who didn't draw you in, one of those ones who thinks they're soooooooo much smarter than everyone else, and when things don't work out, it's hard to tell if it's because we're meant to believe that the narrator did get away with murder because they're just that smart, or because the narrator is an idiot and has just puffed themselves up into buying their own hype. 

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

By V. E. Schwab

 

France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever―and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.

I am not entirely sure what I expected but I am pretty sure it is not what I got.  And I should know better, I actually have read some of Schwab's previous books, but this was both better and less sweet than I expected, and perhaps also more fleeting. I dunno, I spent a lot of the first half of the book just kinda going along with things, and then as soon as we got Henry's backstory, I was immediately anti-Henry.  Bitch, Addie just sweated through three hundred years of theft and homelessness and you out there complaining because one of the hundred available opportunities to you just didn't seem right? And cause you got broke up with you're going to jump off a building? So in the sense that Addie does not end up with Henry, I liked it!  Two thumbs up!

I didn't really like Luc either though, so I wasn't entirely pleased she was hanging with him either, plus, I know we get glimpses here and there, but they basically spent twenty or thirty years together and it's swept by in about five pages? After spending a hundred pages on sad-sack Henry? Is that because if we spent more time on Addie and Luc's relationship we wouldn't even consider Henry a viable option, or that we would be mad that she's planning on exiting her relationship with Luc with a bang? {although I have to say, she calls herself cleverer than Luc, but she honestly thought that Luc making a deal with Henry and her finding Henry was a "mistake"? That doesn't bode well for her future strategizing}

I mean, it was a little bait-and-switchy, but since I wasn't ever really attached to Henry, I didn't mind the ending.  Addie herself, honestly, I was a little let down by what she ended up doing with her life - maybe there's more we don't know about, but for someone who can't be injured and will live forever, it took her a hundred years just to leave the country? And then it was by force, so I don't even know if that counts.  Where else is she going? I mean, no wonder she's depressed, she's basically been like one of those old people living in an apartment and never going outside for the last twenty years of their life.  Also, and this is just me, but if I made that deal and couldn't tell people my real name, I would immediately pick a different one that I would just use.  People change their names all the time.  Am I attached to mine? Yes.  If I couldn't tell it to anyone, would I consider going by a new one? Absolutely!  

I just - for all that she seems like she's got a routine and everything down by the 2014 sections and is in a groove, like, what is she doing? She lacks purpose.  So she's a "muse" (and I appreciate that we kind of elide over however inspiring she can be if they forget her as soon as they leave the room) but she's so taken up with this idea about leaving a mark of some kind that she seems to have spent no time considering whether her mark would be worthwhile.  I dunno, maybe I just don't understand artists. 

Stylistically, nothing really bothered me.  The chapters were brief enough that it never felt like it dragged - except for Henry's POV sections - although I think a lot of repetition could have been excised without losing anything. Another reviewer called it "hollow" and I guess I kind of agree with that. It's a good story but not one that gripped me or that I'll be returning to.   

How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories

 How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories

By Holly Black

An illustrated short book with snippets from Cardan's life, before, during, and after the Folk of the Air series. 

I've reviewed the Folk of the Air series on here already, and stated my enjoyment of it publicly, so you know I was bound to get to this at some point. It's a lovely edition, full-colour illustrations and short, story-like chapters, I think I finished the whole thing in about an hour (although I fell asleep halfway through, because I am an old person). 

I would say that this was an enjoyable, but not essential, addition to the main series.  It didn't really focus much on any of the events during the original storyline, but it did add background to the relationship between Cardan and Nicasia, and also made me realise that Cardan needs therapy, badly.  And it does have a little plot, of a sort. 

It's interesting, because this is kind of a modern take on fairy tales and things like that, but it really brings home how poorly people are treated in those stories, and honestly, most fairy tales kind of end with "happily ever after" without considering whether or not Hansel and Gretel will have nightmares and lifelong trauma from that time their father abandoned them and they were imprisoned and almost murdered in the woods.  

In How the King, etc. etc, we're presented not only with Cardan's early childhood and youthful development but also with his and Jude's seemingly perfect marriage, and honestly, it's hard to square the two.  I mean, this is someone who sleeps in a barn when he's like, six, and pretends it's because he's so well "hidden" that no one can find him (instead of that no one is looking for him) and is beaten regularly by one of his brother's, mmm, puppets after he's ejected from his other brother's residence after being falsely accused of murder, and after all that, we're expected to believe that he's holding it together this well in his marriage?  Even regular marriage isn't that smooth, and this one started with attempted murder and slavery.  I dunno, I would think that might require some serious relationship sit-downs before things are copacetic, but I guess all that happens off screen. 

I'm not sure what it is about these books that makes me bring up these prosaic issues -  maybe it's the way Black mixes the magical and mundane.  It doesn't lessen my enjoyment but it does make me curious about how this world really works - let's have some couples therapy! And artificial insemination! And tax laws!  

Also, and this is directed mostly at the publisher, but WHY do publishers get through a great series (or even partway through a series) and then decide that the next books are going to be styled completely differently - in this case, it's a size larger than the rest of the books.  I'm not going to claim this is a non-petty concern, but it drives me crazy when you get all these books lined up so nice on a shelf and then BAM! You switch spines all of a sudden.  That's why I was so pleased with my Murderbot boxed set that I ordered - it matched the novel exactly.  This is why I do this, folks.  

A Memory Called Empire

 A Memory Called Empire

By Arkady Martine

 

Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor, the previous ambassador from their small but fiercely independent mining Station, has died. But no one will admit that his death wasn't an accident―or that Mahit might be next to die, during a time of political instability in the highest echelons of the imperial court.

Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her Station from Teixcalaan's unceasing expansion―all while navigating an alien culture that is all too seductive, engaging in intrigues of her own, and hiding a deadly technological secret―one that might spell the end of her Station and her way of life―or rescue it from annihilation.

It was hard to read a book about a government coup, of riots and police checkpoints, and factions and succession this week.  I lost my taste for it.  Not quite as exciting when it's your own government, and your own riots and your own stability and permanence which is called into question.  This week I kept thinking of Thirteen Days (which my memory says I saw in the theater as a high school student - which is both baffling since I cannot imagine that to be a school sanctioned trip, nor do I remember anyone else being present, and yet...? The vagaries of memory.  Martine doesn't really address this in the book, but does the imago basically give the bearers eidetic memory powers - that is, once "uploaded", does any experience of feeling truly fade? How could it, if it is meant to preserve both personality and information?  And yet, my personality at age 26 would be very different from my personality at age 42.  Does keeping the memories intact stunt development and learning, as you constantly must reconcile past actions with the present?) in which we teetered on the precipice of war, basically trusting that: "You're a good man; your brother is a good man. I assure you there are other good men. Let us hope the will of good men is enough to counter the terrible strength of this thing that was put in motion."  And what happens when the will of good men is not enough?

I suppose that's a benefit of reading books, that you get to digest and analyze situations without having to relive them, that you can use the book and the story to relieve your emotions and cleanse.  I am angry, and sad, and worried, and a book about an alien ambassador investigating the murder of her predecessor shouldn't come this close to home.  

I wasn't quite engaged even before I got to that part - it's a tough book to get into, as it throws a lot of sci-fi names at you right off the bat, and yes, I know the author studied and lived in Armenia and it is close to her heart, but why you gotta pick "Teixcalaan" as the root of like, every social descriptor is beyond me.  And the naming scriptures were... I dunno, it did lead to the one moment of genuine levity in the book, but I had to keep looking up people in the directory because I needed to know Eight Antidote versus Eight Loop versus Ten Pearl and that Six Direction is a person but Six Outreaching Palms is a department. That being said, did the following make it all worth it? I think yes, by a slim margin:

But Three Seagrass handed her the next infofiche stick, which turned out to be a thoroughly distracting mess concerning import fees on a shipping manifest that would have taken half an hour to sort out had it been answered when Yskandr had been alive.  It took nearly three times that long for Mahit to solve, considering one of the parties had left the planet - that was the Stationer - and another had married into citizenship and changed his name during the lag time.  Mahit made Three Seagrass hunt down the new-made Teixcalaanlitzlim under his new name and issue him a formal summons to the Judicial Department of Interstellar Trade Licensing.

"Just make sure he shows up to pay the import fees on the cargo he bought from one of my Station's citizens, whatever his name is," Mahit told her.

The name the man had chosen, it turned out, was Thirty-Six All-Terrain Tundra Vehicle, a revelation that produced in both Mahit and Three Seagrass a kind of stunned silence.

"No one would actually name a child that," Three Seagrass complained after a moment. "He has no taste. Even if his parents or his creche was from a low temperature planet with a lot of tundra in need of all-terrain vehicles."

And yet, I was also peeved, since I was misled to think that more actual, laugh-out-loud moments might be waiting.  They were not.  I guess I just couldn't really get into the style of the book, where Mahit, the new ambassador, ostensibly makes super clever connections and picks up patterns, but then it has to be spoonfed to us, the readers, because we don't know enough about the world to make the connections ourselves. I had to re-read the part where she realizes that the previous Ambassador offered the imago technology to the current Teixcalaan emperor two or three times before I figured out how she made the mental connection, so it wasn't really an "Aha!" moment so much as it was a cranky, "I guess if you say so."  Which is, you know, fine, too, but I don't think it was what the author was going for.  

I also took issue with the various plots - yes most of them roll up by the end, but we're given almost immediately both an internal Lsel Station disagreement and a sabotaged imago right along with murder and empire-politics, and while yes, the sabotage was necessary for plot reasons (because otherwise Yskandr would have just told her what was going on, I assume, and this would have been a much shorter book), honestly, the Lsel Station drama was never really adequately explained for me - so Faction One was holding information about the alien force in its pocket for back-up, and meanwhile Faction Two wanted to sabotage the new ambassador because... they felt the prior ambassador was too friendly with the Empire, even though they specifically picked for the new ambassador someone who had the same Empire -affinities that the previous ambassador had? And meanwhile, no one's told either ambassador about the alien threat, so he's making nice with the Empire as the only way to save the Station? Seems like one plotline too many.  Also, how is your ambassador supposed to make effective choices if you don't tell him (or anyone else in government, apparently) about the hulking menace perched on the outer edge of your space? I mean, how long were you planning to sit on that one?  When they're outside your door with pitchforks?

So basically: Yskandr, the previous ambassador, felt the only way to preserve Lsel as an independent nation would be to preserve peace in the body mind of the current Emperor via technology commonly used on their station (but that is apparently supposed to be a big secret?) and the Emperor's advisors murdered the ambassador because they felt that was immoral (and these were the advisors who supposedly liked the emperor - even though it seems like the ones who didn't would have more cause to eliminate someone who could purportedly extend his rule) and meanwhile Lsel is sitting on a huge distraction to all of this which can't be detonated immediately because (a) the ambassador was murdered (and wasn't told anyway) and (b) the new ambassador doesn't have a damn clue about what's going on because a different Lsel faction decided to hamstring the person they sent out to deal with the mess and (c) neither Lsel faction knows what the other did, so no one can fix it. 

Meanwhile, the people in the Empire have their own agendas, but I couldn't keep any of them straight, so I didn't bother.  I didn't particularly like any of them, since I wasn't sure who murdered the ambassador, and therefore didn't trust or like any of them until long past the point where I was obviously supposed to trust and like at least some of them.  Also other people try to murder the new ambassador but for different reasons that don't really make sense. Every sequence is also a rehash of how foreign their habits are and how much work it takes to fit in, and that's also exhausting (even if it is accurate). 

Anyway, apparently there is a sequel coming out in March, so maybe some of that gets discussed there, I don't know.  If we even have a country in March.

Strange the Dreamer & Muse of Nightmares

Strange the Dreamer

By Laini Taylor

 I keep wanting to call this Lazlo the Strange which makes more sense to me: "Strange" is just his last name, so the title sounds more foofaraw-y than it really is.  That's also a metaphor for the book itself. Strange the Dreamer is about a society trying to overcome its long nightmare while while the nightmares are still literally hanging over their heads.  If you didn't quite understand that, Sarai is called the Muse of Nightmares to really hammer the point home.  But long story short: this is a really interesting story, and the beginning was excellent, but the book is so long and in the middle part it's really just a lot of getting Lazlo and Sarai acquainted with what's going on in their respective spheres (and falling in love because of course) and the story drags until the very end, when there's a lot of action all at once and then we end in the middle of a scene.  Am I going to read the next one? Well, yeah, actually.  Was I planning on it up until like, the last five pages? NO.  It is what it is, but in point of fact, I do want to find out what happened to the two thousand god-babies, and see how Sarai and Lazlo will extricate themselves from Minya, Sarai's crazy sister. It's also a very picturesque book, what with the blue gods and big statue and salt flats and all, but - OH, I just remembered this: it is also very predictable.  I mean, who didn't know that Lazlo would be able to manipulate the mesarthrium, and be a god and that the kids were actually just tools of the gods themselves, and that the Godslayer and his wife would have some weird thing going on, and then Minya would control the ghost-Sarai?  It didn't really detract from the story, but again, when the readers know what's going to happen, making it not happen for hundreds of pages really makes things drag.

Muse of Nightmares

By Laini Taylor


I'm now in the unfortunate position of trying to write this review like, a year after I read the book, so it's going to be pretty vague!  That being said, I liked the second much more than I thought I would.  I wasn't even that sure I was going to read the second book after I finished the first, but I'm glad I did, even though it's not a series that I'll be buying for my shelves anytime soon.  The good news is that it did stick the landing, and things are basically resolved such that both the townies and the godkids are permanently separated, which is great, because their various traumas and PTSD made it almost a requirement.  No one can really heal while the giant alien ship of your oppressors is literally casting a permanent shadow over your town.  Did I think it made sense for the godkids to go haring off into the universe basically under the wisdom and guidance of a couple of teenagers? No, not really, but they seem like they're having a good time, so let's not dwell too much on how little any of them know about the worlds out there.  I'll just be happy that they're happy. 

The Hidden Moon

The Hidden Moon

By Jeannie Lin

A well-to-do lady in the later years of the Tang Dynasty investigates a murder with imperial connections with the help of a street-wise scoundrel. 

This one I liked very much at the outset, not least because of the location and time of the setting, which I don't have much exposure to.  It made me look up Tang Dynasty clothing styles!  However, the main character, Wei wei, wasn't that compelling to me, and I kinda wished we'd focused more on the political intrigues than the romance.  Although I can see objectively why Gao might like her (educated, beautiful, headstrong) her personality just never quite meshed for me. I ended up moving through the back half of the book fairly quickly.

I liked Magistrate Li quite a lot - he may not be as swashbuckling as Gao, but I like a guy who does his job well and honorably.  That's sometimes the problem in these books - since the author knows they're doing a series, they make the side characters too compelling.  Here, the third character in this love triangle (even though neither Li nor Wei Wei wants to get married to each other) was, to me, more worth following than the two mains.  Perhaps he'll have his own story someday! 

 And even though it was the basis for the connection and romance, the murder investigation got wrapped up so quickly I thought it was a fake out, and at least one story-line seemed like it got dropped completely (so the last assassin that Magistrate Li and Gao were going to draw out by using themselves as targets was... non existent? And we never really find out if the nephew was a co-conspirator or snitch? The other person meeting with Song Yi was.... not someone important to the plot?).  The murder was also a little hard to follow because of my unfamiliarity with Imperial China's social structure and laws - motives and relationships could have been explained a little more for my taste.

Ten Second Reviews

Note that Seven Days of Us and Monstrous Beauty were read in 2019, while Gilded Web was in 2021.

Seven Days of Us

By Francesca Hornak

 

Family gathers together to quarantine for the holidays, with unexpected secrets coming to light.

This was a different kind of predictable - in fact the least predictable thing about it is how much I was won over by the end.  In the beginning, everyone is kind of awful: lies abound, just plain unhappiness, and Jesse planning to just crash into his biological father's life like a bomb was driving me crazy. How could everyone be encouraging this? It's not hard! If your purported father does not respond to your email, HE DOESN'T WANT TO SEE YOU.  I mean, that's pretty much true of everybody, don't just invite yourself places.   But somehow all the contrived craziness cancels itself out and the end is a sweet family holiday story: Jesse's accepted, Emma's cancer is less scary, Andrew's leaving his soul-sucking job, Olivia has a baby (and a dead boyfriend, man, THAT I didn't expect (except I kinda did, because I kept checking to see how long it would go for and saw spoilers, whoops)) and the youngest girl's engagement is over, conveniently bothering her for approximately one and one-half days, just long enough to stir up drama between the family, but not long enough that we start to feel like the relationship was anything but a plot digression.

Monstrous Beauty
By Elizabeth Fama

Mermaid falls in love with land dweller, setting off a chain of events and ghostly curses down the generations. 

This one was....fine.  A young woman in New England finds a ghost (without realizing it) and is drawn to him, only to have to figure out her family's connection with a three/four person murder a couple hundred years ago and - wait, let me try to work this out (with spoilers!).  So the mermaid likes this guy and accidentally drowns him, so the next guy she likes she realizes she needs like human lungs for, so after she's caught and raped by Olaf (the mermaid gets a really shitty deal in this whole thing) she takes his lungs, but then she's pregnant so she gives the baby up and it's adopted by Olaf's terrible wife? Who also accuses her of killing Olaf? (somehow Olaf and his awful wife are the only people smart enough to realize she's a mermaid) and then lures her to the church for murder, except that the mermaid kills Olaf's wife (and also the minister and the little girl who was watching the mermaid's adopted baby also die, because why not) and then somehow the mermaid's husband gives up his life for hers, but she doesn't want him to die so the mermaid takes the baby's soul and gives it to... him?  This part is the most confusing: did her husband die? Did she die? Apparently the husband sticks around as a ghost, and she just...melts? Unclear. And then everytime the baby (or her daughters) has a baby, the mother dies because there is too much soul for the world? Also unclear.  

 

Gilded Web

By Mary Balogh 

Woman in regency England is mistakenly kidnapped and has to marry or face scandal.

This was fine, I guess, ugh.  Mary Balogh is generally alright, but I realized partly through this one that I'd read the third book of this series earlier in 2020 and hated it (mostly because of how awful the hero was - he is literally super mean to his wife for the entire book except at the very end, when he finds out she's pregnant.  Yeah, that's a keeper).  This started out VERY over the top (fake kidnapping! mistaken identity! shenanigans!) but the hero and heroine turned out to be fairly buttoned up and quiet people, so it wasn't too crazy.  I didn't really feel the need for the different viewpoints - I think we get through three or four of the side characters, in addition to the mains, and none of them were that compelling - and it started dragging after the halfway mark.  Plus, the struggle is resolved by the heroine deciding that as long as the hero was willing to call off the engagement, then that means she has enough autonomy to stay in the marriage.  But all of her points are still valid! They're just impossible to solve in regency England under the conditions she was in. Well, not a blazing start to the new year, but we gotta start somewhere!