The Innocents Abroad

The Innocents Abroad, or A New Pilgrim's Progress

By Mark Twain

A detailed narrative of a long excursion with a group of fellow travelers to the Holy Land shortly after the Civil War aboard the vessel Quaker City. The humorous account covers his visits to Paris, Italy, Greece, Egypt and the Holy Land. At times irreverent, it is always entertaining.

So I finally, finally finished The Innocents Abroad. I think it took me longer to read it than it took Mark Twain to get on a steamship, sail over to Europe, tour the continent, head out to the Holy Land, visit approximately one million sights of interest, and return to the United States. It's a long frickin' book!  And it's a wee bit old-fashioned, so you sometimes get ahead of yourself if you skim too much.  And the second half is basically all biblical, which I have very little interest in or knowledge of, so that part was semi-nonsensical to me.

However, do not let that dissuade you from picking this up! I found it to be a delightful travelogue, and very comedic, a la his usual style, even if it did suffer at points from a light coating of racism and long-windedness.  To be fair, I don't think the racism was as bad as it could have been considering the time period and circumstances.  Twain is pretty cynical in general, and rarely complimentary of any ethnicity or country (with the possible exception of Russia, amusing in retrospect), and I would agree that western travelers can find traveling in eastern countries very disorienting and the begging to be unpleasant, so I didn't find it (myself) to put me off the book entirely. I mean, The Egg and I raised a lot more of my eyebrows and that was written by Betty MacDonald in 1945. 

This is one book that I would really love to read an annotated version of. From the beginning, just when he's talking about the hooded women of the Azores, and sights of Pompeii, and then going into the valleys of Damascus and Syria, and the seashell path in the Caucuses, I just really wanted to see pictures of what he describes so evocatively, and chart their path, and get historical background.  I found myself on wikipedia getting lost in the history of the tsars and looking up old black and white pictures, and color pictures and maps and just taking a thousand little trips as I joined Twain on his journey.  

It is very, very long, but it was never tiresome, and there's a tartness to it that cuts through a lot of the length. And it did feel immediate too - even early Twain was a master at pinpointing just the things which make you feel like you're there with him and his fellow "pilgrims". 

2: A Book Set on a Plane, Train, or Cruise Ship

Raybearer

Raybearer

By Jordan Ifueko

Nothing is more important than loyalty. But what if you've sworn to protect the one you were born to destroy?

Tarisai has always longed for the warmth of a family. She was raised in isolation by a mysterious, often absent mother known only as The Lady. The Lady sends her to the capital of the global empire of Aritsar to compete with other children to be chosen as one of the Crown Prince's Council of 11. If she’s picked, she'll be joined with the other Council members through the Ray, a bond deeper than blood. That closeness is irresistible to Tarisai, who has always wanted to belong somewhere. But The Lady has other ideas, including a magical wish that Tarisai is compelled to obey: Kill the Crown Prince once she gains his trust. Tarisai won't stand by and become someone’s pawn--but is she strong enough to choose a different path for herself? With extraordinary world-building and breathtaking prose, Raybearer is the story of loyalty, fate, and the lengths we're willing to go for the ones we love.

 

I started out comparing this to The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, because it was about a sheltered kid who goes out into the larger world and winds up getting into adventures, and then we skipped forward several years and that fell by the wayside, and then we took a trip into the bush and I got Black Leopard, Red Wolf vibes, but only slightly, since that book is definitely was more adult than Raybearer, and I guess then I got kind of like, Tamora Pierce vibes? Not that any of that is bad!  And frankly, it didn't feel derivative the way that Children of Blood and Bone did (very strong Avatar: The Last Airbender plot) even though it was vaguely reminiscent of all of them. 

So there's been a push for more diverse cultures and settings in sci-fi and fantasy (Black Sun is a good example of that) and while I appreciate that this was not set in faux-medieval Europe, I did feel, at times, that the broad geographic and cultural empire of Aritsar felt very "pan-African" at times to the detriment of the setting.  We clearly see East Asian and South Asian influences and as a result, it felt more like the other provinces kind of melded together as "African".  I know there's a lot of diaspora in current Nigeria, where the author's background is, but I just keep thinking of that old chestnut, which is the more specific you can be in telling the story, the more general the appeal.  Would keeping it tighter geographically and culturally have given it more depth?

There was also commentary on social justice and law reform which seemed influenced by current events. I initially got very excited, as it seemed like we would get into real debates on social ills and quick fixes and unseen causes when there was (a) the initial question about certain provinces not performing well on the mind tests, and two answers of: are they just bad at it in general, or is it because alphabetically, their names are last called for food and they're hungry, and then (b) Tarisai's attempt to create a child foster care and protective services process, butting up against the practical concerns of: money.  But after those two early examples, it seemed like we just went straight into: the villains make bad laws and the heroes make good laws.  [Spoiler alert: I started reading the second book and I'm only a chapter in so far, and I am incredibly disappointed with how the book starts, Tarisai basically deciding that if she likes the person, then they should get off scott-free, never mind that they committed murder in cold blood - for very little reason!  A very bad murder! And Tarisai is the high judge, who is trying to create an equitable system!  The second book treats her breaking this person out of prison as like, a hijink for the greater good.  If that doesn't get addressed, I'm going to have a very different impression of the story. And further spoiler - I read one chapter and then just stopped, for like, months.  It was not beguiling me.]

In hindsight, I like this book while I was reading it, and I was excited about the second, but then, after getting only a little ways into the second, the problems I had with it were exacerbated and ultimately I just wasn't excited about continuing the story, although I definitely will, for the challenge.  Tarisai has a childish outlook and approach that works fine in the beginning, but begins to be grating as we get further along and she should be more mature.  But I do like the setting, and the storyline, and I appreciate the familial relationships that the Raybearer and the council present, although again, it's one of those things that you kind of go, "How did they ever succeed in erasing the second Raybearer in the first place?" in terms of plausibility.  Some suspension of disbelief is required.

 

44: A Duology (Part 1)

 

When No One is Watching

When No One is Watching

By Alyssa Cole

Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community’s past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block—her neighbor Theo.

But Sydney and Theo’s deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear. Their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised.

When does coincidence become conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other—or themselves—long enough to find out before they too disappear?

I struggled with this one - I'm not sure where exactly it's lacking, but it did feel lacking to me.  I didn't warm up the characters right away, or even at all.  They switch off viewpoints between Theo and Sydney and we're introduced to both as they're drunk/hungover and aimless.  Sydney is admittedly paranoid and kind of belligerent, Theo is a weird passive aggressive doormat.  Both have "secrets," which are kind of out of left field, albeit nothing too outre for the genre.  They're not really people I like spending time with, or feel empathetic towards.  So that's strike one.

Strike two is maybe the concept itself.  It's basically a "what if gentrification was actually a legit conspiracy to eliminate black people from a community (instead of simply being a convenient byproduct) and people were being murdered and experimented on" kind of concept.  Not a bad idea, per se, but... I don't know, there were thriller-ish elements - the weird cabbie, the drugged man, the fake meter reader - but we also spent a lot of time just rehashing basic history, i.e., the seizure of land from anyone non-white, if the land was valuable at that time, the racial policing, yada yada yada.  Like yeah, it's important for background, but it also slows down the pace a loooooot.

It's compared to Get Out in the description, but I feel like it's a less successful take on the genre. Maybe the idea just lends itself better to a theatrical presentation. Maybe it's because there's never really a point at which any white person (other than Theo and possibly Jenn/Jen) is even marginally suspected to be a good person? Like, forget microaggressions, it's pretty much just straight up aggression.  I think it loses some of the thriller feel here too, because we're not second guessing whether this is actually happening - it's actually happening, and it's not that subtle. Maybe if we spent all the narration with Sydney? Then Theo could have been a wild card, and added more uncertainty to the story. 

I liked the incorporation of the old folks into the "actually onto the villains' game the whole time" role, but feel like they were underused - again, with main characters like Sydney and Theo, I think bringing the old people in (and potentially putting them at risk, raising the stakes) would make you care more about the characters.  

I also appreciated how all of the MANY people Sydney and Theo killed (at least, like 5-10, right? I lost track at the rejuvenation meeting) were just elided over since the corporation took care of everything.  Really? How convenient. And convenient that both Sydney and Theo were like, cold blooded shooters. We spend all this time really laying the groundwork for how realistic a conspiracy this could be, and then blow it all up with the dumb-enough-to-use-a-neighborhood-chatroom-to-lay-bare-their-plots, plus don't get me started on all the Wild West shooting goin' on in them thar hospital.

What's weird to me is how many people downvoted it solely because of the language.  I mean, there were a lot of other issues besides the cursing, for sure.  It felt kind of messy.  I'm not big into Cole's other romance novels, so it might just be her style, but it fell flat to me.  Again, because the reader knows the corporation is behind all of it, but it takes so long for Sydney and Theo to catch up that we don't have a lot of time for unfolding the conspiracy.  It's pretty much: hey, everyone we interacted with in the book is a bad guy and they're having a meeting this Tuesday. Literally, even the lawyer for her mother is not merely lazy and uncaring (which would have still been fine for drama too! We need those uncaring bystanders and again - uncertainty builds tension!) but actively involved.  Sometimes it can be frustrating to get done with "the bad guy" only to find out they're only a small part of the bigger picture, and here's an even bigger and badder guy we never suspected, but this was frustrating too.  We never even catch a glimpse of the snake's head.

33: A Social-Horror Book

A Winter's Promise

A Winter's Promise (Book One of the Mirror Visitor Quartet)

By Christelle Dabos

Plain-spoken, headstrong Ophelia cares little about appearances. Her ability to read the past of objects is unmatched in all of Anima and, what’s more, she possesses the ability to travel through mirrors, a skill passed down to her from previous generations. Her idyllic life is disrupted, however, when she is promised in marriage to Thorn, a taciturn and influential member of a distant clan. Ophelia must leave all she knows behind and follow her fiancé to Citaceleste, the capital of a cold, icy ark known as the Pole, where danger lurks around every corner and nobody can be trusted. There, in the presence of her inscrutable future husband, Ophelia slowly realizes that she is a pawn in a political game that will have far-reaching ramifications not only for her but for her entire world.

The World of the Arks

Long ago, following a cataclysm called the Rupture, the world was shattered into many floating celestial islands, now known as arks. Over each, the spirit of an omnipotent and immortal ancestor abides. The inhabitants of these arks each possess a unique power. Ophelia, with her ability to read the pasts of objects, must navigate this fantastic, disjointed, perilous world using her trademark tenacity and quiet strength. 

 I found myself intrigued by the book description and sale pitches ("Game of Thrones meets Pride and Prejudice!"), and checked it out.  I was having trouble with this entry anyway, since BookTok seems to exist solely to promote popular dreck, and I'd read mostly everything I was at all intrigued by. And I'm in the middle of Innocents Abroad, which is fine, I'm enjoying it, but it's also as long as the universe, and I'm still in Italy, despite reading for almost two weeks. Anyway, I wanted a bit of change, although Winter's Promise is also long. 

I really regretted it for at least the first 40% of the book.  Let me summarize it for you: Ophelia finds out she has to marry someone from the Pole, she mopes around, breaks things (accidentally), says very little, mopes around, breaks more things, gets yelled at, mopes around, gets packed up and shipped up north, and is warned no one can be trusted, she mopes around, breaks more things, tries to find a bit of adventure out there, is verbally and physically abused, they move, repeat ad infinitum.  There's no sense of development, achieving anything in the first half of the book.  Ophelia is a chess piece, basically, and just goes where she's put.  (Breaking things as she goes, all the fucking time).  I honestly am not even entirely sure of the point of the first half of the book, or why we spend any time on Anima, her home ark.  It all seems very dreary and pointless, and it's not helped because we're basically housebound on the north pole for most of it. Plus, and this was really only an issue for me in the first few chapters, the characters have weird fakeish conversations where they spout out worldbuilding information instead of letting us arrive at it more naturally. The scenes with her godfather really grated on me.  

And Ophelia herself is a difficult heroine to root for: she has no power (within the setting she's placed, she has magical mirror/object reading powers), she's apparently disliked or hated by everyone she meets, she doesn't listen to good advice, and she has no self-determination or autonomy - she spends almost every minute in the book just getting manipulated or moved into scenarios by various people around her, and letting things happen to her (to be fair, the one time she tries to get out on her own it ends disastrously, but what can you expect when you go out adventuring and you know you have a bad sense of direction and make no effort to have a safe route home). It feels repetitive and aimless.

And yet, for all that, I found myself really getting into the last half of the book.  It picks up dramatically when we've moved once again, to Clairdelune, the "protected" sanctuary of the Ambassador, where Ophelia has to pretend to be a valet, and there are other characters to interact with.  There's actually some inklings of a plot, some activity, more development, etc., etc. And then we hit a denouement (where we find out that we have to move because Ophelia screwed the pooch again) and then the book ends, abruptly, literally in an elevator on the way to see someone. I mean, I guess it worked, since I;m checking out book 2, but it's not what I would call a really enjoyable experience.  I just can't foresee myself ever wanting to re-read this book, even if I ultimately enjoy the series.  

And don't get me started on Ophelia and Thorn's relationship. Maybe I have the benefit of being able to read the dust jackets, so I know they end up together, but her whole attitude towards him also was frustrating to read: she's terrified of him, he's cold to her, she acts out, she kind of depends on him a bit, she thinks he's in love with her (and didn't that seem like just wishful thinking), she's immediately appalled, she's "rude" to him (rude for Ophelia is telling people who are virtual strangers that you don't love them), then she finds out he's kept things from her (OBVIOUSLY) and she's so offended she treats him like public enemy number one.  Duh, he's been lying to you, Ophelia, for one, he's told you exactly jack shit about anything going on.  And you don't love him anyway, and seem horrified by the idea that he loves you (although that seems out of character for him) so CHILL.  It's like, the only decisions Ophelia makes are bad ones.  

Anyway, aside from those three problems (pacing, drippy heroine, drippy heroine who acts out against the hero solely for angst purposes) the world building is actually interesting, seems kind of internally coherent, and I'm interested enough to keep going, at least for now.  But I really can't stand another book that drags on, just beating up on drippy Ophelia the whole time.  Aaaaaand I just read reviews for the next three books and yep, looks like I'm going to be massively disappointed.   Le sigh.

 11: A #BookTok Recommendation

She Who Became the Sun

She Who Became the Sun

By Shelley Parker-Chan

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness...

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family's eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family's clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate. After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness.

I got into this one! I heard it recommended before I heard it was actually a twisted history of a real person, the Hongwu Emperor of 1300s China, who founded the Ming Dynasty. So I was originally interested as an original fiction tale, rather than a fictionalized version of a real person.  I'm not sure which is harder, but it works on both levels.  There's almost a Michener/McCullough/Rutherfurd feel to it.  That's not a knock; their books give a very personal spin on history.  She has a fairly broad scope.  We're given a fair number of narrative viewpoints - Zhu herself, Ma, the thief, Esen, Ouyang - although the focus is primarily on Zhu's rise from peasant through the Red Turbans, and secondarily on Ouyang's revenge on the Mongols, and the bulk of the book takes place over two years while the Mongols and the Red Turbans fight for ascendancy over central China. I did wish, at points, for Zhu to be even more prominent in the storyline, rather than switching back and forth, although there's usually always a reason for it (although the thief's purpose as narrator seems specious  - it feels like Zhu could have taken that on herself. The only major exception I can think of is the thief's narration of the ghost meal plot, and if Parker-Chan didn't want to tip us off too early as to Zhu's plan.  But I will continue to say what I've always felt, which is that while a good surprise can make a book great, misdirection of the readers can feel like a cliched ploy- unless it's the point of the book, like Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. When you know what's happening early on, like here (Parker-Chan intentionally hints what Zhu will do!) it just seems cheap to try to hold back the reveal further. I think that's one of the reasons I was so unmoved by Gideon the Ninth, it just felt like the author held back so much in order to make the plot points pop, which felt underhanded and manipulative.)

Zhu as a character wholly succeeds for me, although I wish we had more formative years with her. Ouyang I didn't want to like, partly because he was positioned in opposition to Zhu, and maybe also partly because I think Zhu made a good point about him thinking that being castrated had anything to do with being less of a man (although to be fair to him, everyone else certainly thinks that, so I assume it would be hard for him not to do so likewise). I kind of agree with Zhu on this one: to survive is the key.

There's a lot in the book about fate: escaping it, turning towards it, helping someone realize their own, and it's interesting how Parker-Chan has added an additional magical element, by ghosts and this idea that the Mandate of Heaven is actual fire that can be seen.  I'll be waiting to see if the new elements make any material difference in the storyline versus Zhu Yuanzhang's documented life. 

What else can I say? It's lengthy but compelling.  Parker-Chan does a good job keeping characters distinguishable and memorable, even with the Chinese naming conventions (at least we don't get into Russian naming conventions which are pretty much: anything goes and god be with you), so even though we substantially broaden our cast of characters after the first section, the average reader shouldn't get lost. Pacing is good. Oh, right -!

This is just Part One.  Of how many, I don't know, maybe two? Three? I mean, we spend most of the book on just two years and Zhu Yuanzhang lived until he was almost 70, so, in theory I guess, like it could be the first of twenty. I don't know if the next will focus much, or at all on Ouyang, who finished up the first part of his REVENGE, and is now gunning for the whole Mongol court, and I know Chen will pop back up at some point (thanks, Wikipedia!), but it seems like Zhu is pretty comfortably in charge of the Red Turbans, the prime minister and young lama are dead, and now all she has to do is unite central China.  Easy!  Especially when a stray eunuch is targeting your biggest enemies preemptively.  Parker-Chan's website says it's a duology, although no name or information is available about part 2, so we'll see.  Honestly, it does mostly stand on it's own, although it feels also a bit unfinished at the end.  Things wrap up rapidly and we don't see much fallout, aside from Ma's objections to the death of the young Mandater.  

[Sidebar: I did find the tone of the section on the child's death a little weird.  It just felt...like it was supposed to mean more than it did? I mean, was anyone really surprised that Zhu killed the kid? We know how the story ends, and while yeah, it's possible for misadventure to befall people of many ages for many reasons, did anyone, except Ma, think this child was going to be leaving the situation alive? It's almost more interesting to me that Parker-Chan had Ma object so strenuously to it, although it is in keeping with her character.  But you'd think Ma would have become slightly more pragmatic at some point, having seen her father killed in battle, her fiance executed for a traitor, and her husband lose his arm in a duel. Or is Parker-Chan's point that after a very short time in Zhu's life, she's gone from agonizing over killing a monk to a child's death not even meriting a debate. If so, she weirdly missed the mark, maybe the conversation should have been with Xu Du instead.]

Anyway, I like rooting for people who seem smart, and who figure out solutions to their problems that I can't guess, so I'm all in on Zhu's side.  Which is great, because it sounds like she's going to found a preeminent dynasty. Let's see what she does next!  And we'll gently ignore the pun in the title She Who Became the Sun because I feel dumb I only just noticed it, and also it's too on the nose for words. 

22: A Book with a Character on the Ace Spectrum

Dopesick

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America

By Beth Macy

In this extraordinary work, Beth Macy takes us into the epicenter of a national drama that has unfolded over two decades. From the labs and marketing departments of big pharma to local doctor's offices; wealthy suburbs to distressed small communities in Central Appalachia; from distant cities to once-idyllic farm towns; the spread of opioid addiction follows a tortuous trajectory that illustrates how this crisis has persisted for so long and become so firmly entrenched. 

Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, Macy sets out to answer a grieving mother's question-why her only son died-and comes away with a gripping, unputdownable story of greed and need. From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, Macy investigates the powerful forces that led America's doctors and patients to embrace a medical culture where overtreatment with painkillers became the norm. The unemployed use painkillers both to numb the pain of joblessness and pay their bills, while privileged teens trade pills in cul-de-sacs, and even high school standouts fall prey to prostitution, jail, and death. 

Through unsparing, compelling, and unforgettably humane portraits of families and first responders determined to ameliorate this epidemic, each facet of the crisis comes into focus. In these politically fragmented times, Beth Macy shows that one thing uniting Americans across geographic, partisan, and class lines is opioid drug abuse. But even in the midst of twin crises in drug abuse and healthcare, Macy finds reason to hope and ample signs of the spirit and tenacity that are helping the countless ordinary people ensnared by addiction build a better future for themselves, their families, and their communities.

I think that description is balderdash.  It's a much bleaker book than the blurb appears.  The "once idyllic" farm communities are actually coal mining areas, beset first by the terrible working conditions of the mines, and now by the even worse specter of no working conditions at all. Maybe they're scenic, but they were never idyllic.  There's also very little hope in the book.  Although there is greater recognition of opioids and laymen are more familiar with the dangers of Oxycontin, Macy doesn't seem to think the epidemic is slowing at all. I suppose it will burn itself out eventually, as fewer people get on the opioid track to begin with, but there's nothing promising real diversion from that track once began. 

I was wrapped up in the book; although it's fairly dense Macy manages to keep it pretty zippy and move things along.  The first section focuses on the pushed over-prescription of opioids for low-level issues, the incentives behind the American medical system for companies and individual doctors to upsell drugs and the gaps in oversight which let it happen (and the financial incentives to keep doing it this way). The second section is more about individuals who, once hooked for whatever reason, are now sliding deeper into addiction, and the third section was more about what options there are for diversion, rehab, prison, getting clean, etc. The third section felt the weakest, less focused and more self-insertion, as to what is or is not an appropriate way to treat people.  The whole fentanyl thing was also confusing - fentanyl is another opioid drug, but also, any amount included in heroin will kill you? Or is it just fake fentanyl? It felt like the topic was so big another book could have been written on it, so including just a little bit was like getting only one or two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. 

One criticism I will level is Macy's habit of introducing a character, diverting almost immediately onto another topic or segue, and then come back to the character.  It was annoying for several reasons: (a)  I couldn't keep everyone straight and that made it harder to connect who I'd already been reading about versus who was newly introduced (b) it felt like she was doing an injustice to their personal stories by leaving us on these sort of "cliffhanger" notes, like they weren't real people with heartbreaking problems, and (c) she'd sometime bring us in in the middle of an event, like an overdose, and I struggled to figure out if we'd read any background on these people or not.  Was I supposed to remember that they had been in fifth grade together? Whose mother was it that this person was relying on? Although honestly, it wasn't all that relevant, since basically anytime a mother was mentioned, they had an adult child who was addicted, and they were all helping out other parents and children.  No explanation was given as to why fathers were never involved.  Were these all single parent households? Did the fathers just not care about their children? Is any of that relevant to these kids' addiction stories? Who knows?

For all that I criticize, it is a good, engrossing, important read.  There needs to be more attention paid to the systemic problems pointed out in the book - the incentives to push drugs for profit instead of health, the bias towards jail instead of rehabilitation, the reluctance to commit resources or medicines to combat the problem, the idea that the addicted are somehow deficient, rather than victims. Although I certainly don't feel as sympathetic for teens who just took random medication at pill parties as those who were over-prescribed opiates by trusted physicians, I also don't think that anyone deserves to be reviled for a single bad decision, especially one when made at the height of peer pressure and immaturity. Like I said, it's a depressing read, but a worthwhile one. Hopefully it will help change minds and allow doors to open that create better results for the addicted than what we currently see.

31: A Book Featuring A Man-Made Disaster

 

We Are Okay

We Are Okay

By Nina LaCour

Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart.

I mostly picked this one because (a) reviews said it was short and (b) it was available at the library - and in fact had been on my TBR list for some time, even though I have no idea when or why I added it.  It's not something I would  normally go for, i.e., it has no plot, and concerns the emotional goings-on of a young teenager who mopes around after several of her family members die. 

It sounds kind of maudlin, but you know, in the way that teens really dig.  The author does a great job of not falling too deeply into that hole, despite the subject matter.  Yes, it does make you cry (even me, who hates sentimental teenagers and found families and other such wholesome activities, and even though I could feel myself starting to cry, and tried to will myself not to fall into the trap).  

It's a profoundly sad book.  The present storyline involves the narrator, Marin, planning for and receiving a visit from her old friend/ex-girlfriend Mabel, from California, during winter break. The past storyline, is pretty much what you think it will be from the outset, i.e., Marin graduates high school, starts getting involved with Mabel, and then her grandfather, with whom Marin has grown up after her mother died surfing, basically commits suicide by walking out to sea, leaving her to find out that he was hoarding all of her mother's memories.  This upsets her, leaving her to flee California like she's wanted for a felony, hence her current hermit-like cocoon at school in New York.  

Mabel's visit gets her to open up, grieve, talk, and begin planning how to exist again, rather than just remain in stasis.  It is, as I mentioned, very light on plot, very heavy on character drama.  The romance with Mabel is more wistful and in the past than an active relationship.  This is one of those books where you kind of read them for the catharsis jolt you get.  Does it feel weird and manipulative? Yes.  Does it prevent you from crying? No. I knew what was coming and I still cried.  

So, is it a good book? It's well written, and contains a decent enough story.  It's a sweet story, and no one is really the villain.  Mabel comes across as inhumanly patient, but aside from that, it's decently realistic, I guess.  For a YA novel.  There was a phase of my life that this would have hit all those synapses, but I'm a little more jaded and less wallow-y now.  I'd still recommend it to any teen girl.

05: A Sapphic Book

 

 

 

The Ex Hex

The Ex Hex 

By Erin Sterling

Nine years ago, Vivienne Jones nursed her broken heart like any young witch would: vodka, weepy music, bubble baths…and a curse on the horrible boyfriend. Sure, Vivi knows she shouldn’t use her magic this way, but with only an “orchard hayride” scented candle on hand, she isn’t worried it will cause him anything more than a bad hair day or two.

That is until Rhys Penhallow, descendant of the town’s ancestors, breaker of hearts, and annoyingly just as gorgeous as he always was, returns to Graves Glen, Georgia. What should be a quick trip to recharge the town’s ley lines and make an appearance at the annual fall festival turns disastrously wrong. With one calamity after another striking Rhys, Vivi realizes her silly little Ex Hex may not have been so harmless after all.

Suddenly, Graves Glen is under attack from murderous wind-up toys, a pissed off ghost, and a talking cat with some interesting things to say. Vivi and Rhys have to ignore their off the charts chemistry to work together to save the town and find a way to break the break-up curse before it’s too late.

 This was firmly "fine"! Contemporary romances are not really my thing, although I do keep trying them for some reason, thinking that I'll enjoy them much more than I actually do.  But this one left a more favorable impression than most for me, probably because of the setting and details were just so...comforting.  Not that it was a soothing book, but more like it felt kind of nostalgic, like watching one of those old kids' movies about witches, like Halloweentown or Hocus Pocus, but you know, with some sex in it.  I will say that I think Hocus Pocus's greatest misstep was making Binx a cat for like, the whole movie!  Let's give the tweens something to sigh over!  Between him and Vincent Kartheiser in Masterminds, I had a type.  Look, floppy hair was in back then, I'm not making excuses.

Anyway, for adults who like witches, Rhys is a great update to Thackery Binx.  He's hot, he thinks the heroine walks on water, he's helpful, yada yada yada.  I mean, the characters themselves are not the point.  They're both kind of bland people, unexceptional and unexceptionable, I would say. They don't have a big misunderstanding (although how Rhys broke the betrothal which led to the break up in the first place - was that ever explained? Did I blink and miss it? I feel like that's a story there, right?), they cooperate well in their investigation - such as it is. They acknowledge they're both adults now, nothing but the burden of a long distance relationship is stopping them from banging boots now.  It's nice not to have that heavy angst. It's basically Hocus Pocus for all the ladies who were children when the movie came out.

Like I said, it's the scenery and details which keep you interested. I hate to say it, but I skimmed some of the dialogue between them (and missed some of the sex scenes) because they're just not that exciting when they're not in a haunted house, trying to capture a ghost, or whatnot.  But when they are? That's when the magic happens, haha.  Or at least, the good parts.  More talking cat, more angry tchotchkes, more ghosts and pumpkins and fall weather and pointy hats and burning candles and the color purple!   I will probably read the next one, having forgotten all about this book except that I vaguely liked it, but it's not a real priority. And it'll feel just like some comfortable pyjamas to cozy up into.

Anyway, not thrilling, not terrible, resoundingly "fine!"

 35: A Book with a Constellation on the Cover or in the Title

Dark Waters

Dark Waters

By Katherine Arden

Until next time. That was chilling promise made to Ollie, Coco and Brian after they outsmarted the smiling man at Mount Hemlock Resort. And as the trio knows, the smiling man always keeps his promises. So when the lights flicker on and off at Brian's family's inn and a boom sounds at the door, there's just one visitor it could be. Only, there's no one there, just a cryptic note left outside signed simply as —S.

The smiling man loves his games and it seems a new one is afoot. But first, the three friends will have to survive a group trip to Lake Champlain where it's said Vermont's very own Loch Ness monster lives. When they’re left shipwrecked on an island haunted by a monster on both land and sea, Brian's survival instincts kick in and it's up to him to help everyone work together and find a way to escape.

One thing is for sure, the smiling man is back and he wants a rematch. And this time Brian is ready to play. 

I zipped right through this one, and my only complaint, really, is that it felt very short, compared the first two.  I read it on a device, and the little ticker said the book ended at 75%, the other 25% being previews of other books.  I didn't want to read the preview of the next book, Empty Smiles since I wanted to get to it all at once.  So I was left wanting more, which isn't a bad thing, but I am glad that I waited so long to read this one, so I don't have too much longer before the next (and final) book is published.  

In fact, I read this one akin to when events were happening in the book, i.e., a Saturday in early May, although I was not at Lake Champlain, sadly.  And it looks like the next one takes place in August, so from this time to then, I will assume poor Ollie is lost in the mirror world.  That's a long ass time!

Because of the cover, I was thinking that this might take place underwater (I mean, if you can do a mirror world, you can do an underwater world I suppose) and I was thinking that was kind of stupid, so I'm glad Arden didn't go for that.  It's also interesting to me how she manages to keep the adults on the other side of these supernatural shenanigans even where they're clearly necessary to keep the plot mostly believable (send four kids out on a boat by themselves? yeah, that would have been a stretch).  It may be a low bar, but I appreciate the effort she put into making it at least semi-realistic in the context of this children's ghost story.  

This one is more of a straight monster story than the previous two.  While, yes, scarecrows are scary, they were more the minions of the Smiling Man.  Here, although I assume the Smiling Man is implicated in the whole set-up, the lake monster is more of a creature-feature, like, uh... Anaconda.  While there's a ghost involved (more than one), he's a nice ghost, who's willing to kill you so as to avoid your slow death by hunger/giant snake.  I like the change of pace, and am (again) impressed at Arden's ability to both incorporate horror tropes, and also switch it up so we don't read the same story four times.  

I would say that this feels less like a complete book, both because it feels shorter than the other two books, but also because it leads into and sets up book four.  We're left on a more significant cliffhanger and frankly, haven't even made it safely back to shore yet when the book ends (and really reckoning with the fact that Phil's uncle was eaten by a lake monster... although as Phil says, it's how he would have wanted to go).  

This is Brian's turn to shine (I assume Phil will narrate the final book in the quartet) and he's okay, but doesn't bring a lot of special abilities to the fore.  It seems like both Coco and Ollie take more of an active approach to the problem while Brian and Phil are mostly along for the ride.  It's not bad, just feels a little bit shallower. 

 

I really wanted to read this one, and so I entered into the spirit of the challenge, by selecting this for a "Sister Lake" exchange instead of a Sister City.  Honestly, I'm pretty excited by the other book too, I'm looking forward to learning more about Lake Toba.

49: Two Books Set in Twin Towns Lakes, aka "Sister Cities Lakes"

Trail of Lightning

Trail of Lightning

By Rebecca Roanhorse

While most of the world has drowned beneath the sudden rising waters of a climate apocalypse, Dinétah (formerly the Navajo reservation) has been reborn. The gods and heroes of legend walk the land, but so do monsters—and it is up to one young woman to unravel the mysteries of the past before they destroy the future.

Maggie Hoskie is a Dinétah monster hunter, a supernaturally gifted killer. When a small town needs help finding a missing girl, Maggie is their last best hope. But what Maggie uncovers about the monster is much more terrifying than anything she could imagine.

Maggie reluctantly enlists the aid of Kai Arviso, an unconventional medicine man, and together they travel the rez, unraveling clues from ancient legends, trading favors with tricksters, and battling dark witchcraft in a patchwork world of deteriorating technology.

As Maggie discovers the truth behind the killings, she will have to confront her past if she wants to survive.

Welcome to the Sixth World.

I had this on my list for SO LONG, and I was excited to read it, I swear, but then I read some mishegas about the author being decried as appropriating Navajo culture and mashing things together, which s a shame, since it doesn't affect the quality of the book, but did, perhaps undeservedly, dampen my enthusiasm. I would describe it as akin to Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series, in tone and style, and I also fell off that series after just a few books, so who knows but that I wouldn't have gone much further anyway.  

The idea is still very cool, and it sounds like the second book explores the Big Water disaster that resulted in the setting, which sounds cool, but execution-wise, the pieces just didn't gel for me.  It may have been my fault, for assuming, for example, that Neizghání was like a mentor/father figure to her (since he found her at age 16 and taught her how to fight monsters), so the incorporation of her being in love with him and being heartbroken at his departure was weird and never gained my sympathy.  Maybe the first book should have been her fighting monsters with Neizghání, and the ending being his departure.  That seems like it would have had a lot more emotional resonance (plus maybe Coyote's beef with Neizghání would have made more sense). 

Here's an early example: Maggie is sent off to track down a monster which has abducted a little girl.  She finds the monster, but the girl is too far gone to save.  She brings back the girl's head for the family, but then just drops it off at the front of the compound, so we never see the family's reaction to either (a) her "rescue" or (b) their child's head. It's like we have to rush along to the next plot point so fast that we don't have time to explore Maggie's life or her interactions with people.  We've lost out on building that connection.

And I couldn't figure out why she ever trusted Coyote, since she says in the beginning that he's tricked her before.  Without actually knowing their background and previous interactions, her conversations with him just felt like I was missing a bunch of context and subtext. I still don't understand what the point of Coyote's mission to Canyon de Chelly was in the first place.  Was that supposed to lead her to Neizghání sooner?

And I don't get why Kai's death was necessary or useful.  Perhaps there's some part of Navajo lore that would have explained it to me, but why would she assume that Kai would be reborn? Or that Tah would be brought back because of Kai's death?

I really liked the monster hunting at the beginning - the trade sequence, the desperation of the locals and the lost little girl.  But it starts to feel a little underbaked soon after she meets up with Kai.   Without the relationship with either Neizghání or Tah, there's very little emotional underpinning here.  When I should be anticipating her fight with Neizghání with dread, all I feel is confusion that she ever agreed in the first place and disdain for her choices (especially since it's "to the death" and Neizghání... can't... die... right?).  I mean, even if we accept that they had a lover-quality relationship, him leaving her spurs her on in a fight to the death in a cage match? Girl, look at your life. 

I just couldn't get into Maggie's head or heart enough to ride along with her decisions or feelings. It's like listening to a friend who constantly makes bad choices, and eventually you get impatient that you're still hearing this hard luck story all over again. I like the setting, I like the background, I like the details, but the characters lacked depth and the book lacked an emotional hook, for me. 

I don't think I'll be getting the next book in the series. This is certainly more of an episodic series than her other, so the plots are all pretty well tied off, even though we're waiting on Kai's rebirth and there's a looming threat of Neizghání breaking out of the hoops.  But I just didn't want to spend more time with Maggie or the other characters.  

39: An #OwnVoices SFF (Science Fiction and Fantasy) Book