Bee's Bibliodex

Recently I’ve been widening my reading net a bit, for a variety of reasons-- I’m not in school anymore and so it doesn’t feel as much like a chore to read nonfiction now and then; I’m not currently working through a backlog of cheaply-bought B-books (though I’ll need to go through another phase of that sooner or later, I guess); and I’ve also been taking recs from people who don’t necessarily share my tastes. And all of that’s well and good, except by the start of this year, I just really wanted to get back to my first love, which is Fantasy. In searching for other classic, epic fantasy series, this was one that kept coming up. It’s been around for a while, but I hadn’t heard of it till recently.

100% honest assessment-- this book started SLOW. And then... stayed pretty slow. Like, a lot happened, and there were a few cool moments with the magic, but everything seemed to take forever and there weren’t really any surprises. Bad guys stayed bad. Good guys stayed good. That mysterious character was still mysterious. A lot of mysteries were presented and then never really explained-- I guess you have to read the other books, which is fair, but would it kill you to at least reveal one or two secrets in the first book just so I can feel like something happened?

And while I did appreciate that there were strong female characters... Every. One. Was sexualized! Even the non-human ones! Like, gag me. How many freaking times did Amara blush because, OMG, a man! And the introduction to Isana is literally about how she’s an old maid and worries she’ll never amount to anything because of it, and how she’s always lashing out at the pretty young servant girl out of jealousy because men like her. I mean, really? More than a few times, I literally rolled my eyes at the ridiculousness of it. And the whole thing with the creepy rapist slaver was just... ick. Ew. Gross. Skip it. Unnecessary. It wasn’t super graphic, but if there’s another character like that in the future books, I’m out.

Otherwise, the magic and world were cool enough for sure. I especially loved the whole thing with Tavi, Fade, and the Marat-- but we had to live through a LOT of nonsense with the other characters in order to see how things played out with them-- I distinctly recall thinking “when are we finally going to find out what happens with Tavi?” because it had been chapters and chapters since we’d last seen him. The character building, though, left something to be desired. Take Bernard for example. What’s his personality? Um, he’s big. And brave. And did we mention big? And after reading the whole book, I think... that’s pretty much it. Most of the characters are good or evil with zero nuance. In the course of the story they go through a lot, but there are only a few chances where they do something interesting and unexpected and give you a glimpse of a personality.

I thought the overarching plot seemed well thought-out and intricate enough-- with the politics of the world and the plot for the throne-- but as I said before, I just wish more of it had happened in the first book. Generally, I was hooked enough by the end to want to know what happens in the subsequent books, but more for getting the answers for a few specific questions than because I care what happens to the characters.

Been seeing a lot of hype about these books-- they’ve been recommended on pretty much every blog and website that I follow. That’s not necessarily an indication that a book is good, nowadays, but the synopses I read sounded interesting enough to give the first book a try. I read it with a friend, and we both agreed that it was worth going on to the next books in the series.

Things I liked about this book: the setting, the dialogue-- the world is rich and nicely rendered, and the characters are witty, always trading barbs with each other that are sometimes worth a giggle. That said, while I liked the main characters for their wittiness, none of them really got me very emotionally invested. I felt like that was probably due to the fact that this book is a very YA-type YA novel. What do I mean by that? Well, there are plenty of YA novels that still have really elaborate plots and complex characters, and really function at a level higher than teenage dramas. This one... for me... didn’t quite do that-- the characters were fairly straightforward and a LOT of pages were spent on the googly-eyed-high-school-romance-love-triangle.

I’m not saying that’s entirely a bad thing. The romance wasn’t poorly done, or anything, and if you’re someone who’s into that kind of thing, you’ll love it. For me, though, it just started to feel like a drag on the action after a while-- I started to inwardly groan “We GET it, they LIKE each other, can we move on now?” every time certain characters were in a scene together. And I didn’t overly care about those characters, because the backstory was minimal and delivered in a pretty perfunctory “tell, don’t show” way. Again, fine if you like fluffy reads, good for younger readers. A fun enough read for me, just nothing earth-shattering.

As for the plot-- well, it had one. I will say that although the main plot for this book itself was relatively straightforward (with, like, one decent twist), it was easy to see that this is just the first book in the series and there were a lot of seeds being planted for things that will happen later. I’m not sure if that was the original vision for the series or if it’s one of those oh-crap-the-publisher-wants-a-series-to-make-more-money-so-let’s-break-it-into-more-books. Basically, I wished I’d had a little better sense of how the various seeds tied together, because even by the end of the book some things felt a little out of place and there were a lot of small details I was left wondering, “is this important? Do I need to remember this?”

The perfect novel doesn’t exi...

...

Oh, holy cow you guys.

I’ve read a lot of books. Like, A LOT. And usually, even when I find a book I love, I’m still like, “buuut... then there was this thing... this plothole, this character that was inconsistent, this misogynistic thing, this missed opportunity...”

Not this time. Uprooted is just, quite simply, the closest thing I’ve ever read to the perfect novel. Now, maybe I’m a little biased because the part of the world where it takes place-- because it’s totally Ukraine, let’s be honest, and Ukraine is my muse. I loved the dark, creepy forest magic that really evoked the feel of eastern European folklore, and the badass peasant women who formed the backbone of the cast. The main character, Agnieszka, was plucky and clever, but for me the hands-down winner was her best friend, Kasia, who is both beautiful and a BAMF. I really loved that their friendship was in many ways at the center of this story, and that it was complicated instead of just being sunshine and rainbows. And that wasn’t the only feminist message carried discreetly in this book. Agnieszka’s feminine, disordered, natural magic is looked down upon by the established wizards, who refuse to recognize her power because it doesn’t fit with their rigid, codified conceptualizations of magic. Even when she does succeed in getting acknowledged, everyone assumes she has only gotten that far because of the powerful men who are attracted to her.

I loved, too, that all of the villains and semi-villains were complex, with logical backstories and motivations, and that characters who seems a villain in one part of the story come to be an allies in another. No one is just “evil,” although evil certainly plays a role in the story. If there’s one way to win me over in a book, it’s with morally gray characters-- because that’s when they feel the most real. The plot is also solid, unconventional with a lot of twists and turns, such that while you can feel a few of the things coming, it’s hard to predict the details-- and yet everything makes perfect sense at the end, every loose end tied neatly in a bow, which is exactly the ideal.

If I had to pick one thing to gripe about in this book, it would be the fact that the love interest is kind of verbally abusive toward Agnieszka in the beginning. She’s not a doormat, though-- she doesn’t internalize his abuse, but stands against it, and it’s painted as a failure of his character that she tolerates rather than being totally romanticized. There were a few occasions that walked the line for me, though. At least he shaped up later on.

You guys. These books. *sigh*

In my inaugural entry, I talked about how much I loved the first book of this series, The City of Brass. Well, The Kingdom of Copper was every bit as great. Chakraborty is really a master of sneakily putting all the pieces in place for the first two-thirds of the novel, so that you are intrigued and have some inkling of what might be coming, but don’t quite know how it’s going to happen, or what the consequences will be-- and then, at some point about a third of the way from the end, all hell breaks loose. The dominoes just start falling one after another, each knocking over the next, and you can’t put the book down until you know how it ends!

And oh, the magic! The world is so beautifully rendered with such imaginative touches. Mythical beasts, unique spells, and enchanted buildings make this book feel like something out of a dream.

I’ve been reading these books with a friend and we were both a little miffed by how this one started out. Our main complaint was the timeskip between the first and second books (five years! Five years???) and how little had supposedly happened during that time. A common refrain between us as we discussed the early chapters was, “It’s been FIVE f***ing years!”-- meaning, how has X character not learned Y fact in spite of having all this time to figure it out, or how has P character still not gotten over their grudge against Q... and frankly, even having finished the book, I still stand by some of those sentiments. Unless there’s something I haven’t foreseen happening in the third book that justifies it better, I think a year or two would have been sufficient to explain most of the things that had happened, while still keeping it believable that other things hadn’t yet happened.

We also started to get tired of the amount of violence done towards children in these books. Just, like, we get it that those characters are evil, do they really need to slaughter a hundred more children to get the point across?

And while there are plenty of things that create good tension in the story-- wondering what will happen when a character learns another’s secret, most typically-- a lot of times the payoff is less than satisfying. Often, it turns out to be “actually, everyone is totally OK with what happened and not mad at all like that character feared,” or, “actually, that character already knew the secret they were trying to hide from him all along.” Womp womp.

But be that as it may, this book delivered on a lot of fronts! In the first book, all three main characters-- Nahri, Ali, and Dara, -- spend the whole book being helpless pawns in a larger sociopolitical context, being manipulated and used by everyone around them. In this book, they start to come into their own-- although some of them have more success than others. We were cheering for them every step of the way, so it felt rewarding to see them finally take active steps to control their own fates.

The ending came with a lot of shocking twists and turns, and some very dramatic moments. To avoid spoilers I won’t go into much detail, but suffice it to say that, with one exception, we were satisfied with those who survived the ending and those who didn’t. I really liked the extent to which each character’s history and personality played right into their actions at the end, creating a very seamless and natural flow of events.

I need to mention the role of Ali’s brother, Muntadhir, in particular, about whom I’d had mixed feelings in the past. This ending laid to rest my reservations about him and the role he played in the ending turned out to be both poetically emotional and hilarious. He’s now legit my favorite.

Mystery novels aren’t my usual fare, but I do like one now and then just to mix things up. I love the puzzle-solving aspect of them, and the twists and turns, the complexity of characters with things to hide. A Study in Scarlet Women had all of that, plus a lot of other enjoyable aspects. Although the name of the book shows that this is supposed to be a retelling of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, but really there’s very little in common with those stories except for the personality and abilities of the main character, and the British setting.

One major thing I appreciated about this book was that in rewriting Sherlock’s stories with a female protagonist, the author didn’t just switch the gender of a few characters, but instead used it as an opportunity to really investigate and reflect on a deep level the expectations placed on women in that time and place. Charlotte Holmes is harshly judged for her abrasive personality and not appreciated for her genius. Unlike her male counterpart in the classic stories, she can’t just impress everyone with a few startling insights, instead she has to go to great lengths to be able to utilize the gift of her mind. She has to persuade her father that she doesn’t need to get married, she has to struggle to find a way to support herself in a society that severely limits possible avenues for women, and she has to assume a male pseudonym for giving help to the police. The book is filled with female characters making the best they can of the limited choices they’re given.

I read Ready Player One last year and it was so awesome and full of geeky wonderfulness that Cline’s new book, Armada, automatically earned itself a spot on my TBR.

Not gonna lie, I was a little disappointed with the beginning of the book. It felt a little too much like an attempt to re-capture the ‘80s-pop-culture magic of Ready Player One. Not to mention the fact that the premise was also familiar to anyone who’s seen The Last Starfighter or read Ender’s Game, which is basically every sci-fi fan-- a teenage kid finds out that the video game he’s been playing for years is actually part of a real-life battle with aliens bent on human destruction, and as one of the best players, only he can save Earth from the threat.

I’ve read my share of King over the years, enough to say I’m something of a fan. While there’s definitely a limit to how much Horror I can read at one time, I do enjoy some every now and again, just to change things up. The Dark Tower books have been recommended to me more than once, and I’ve been meaning to get around to them for ages.

I’d been told this series was more Fantasy than Horror, and I definitely found that to be true. While still dark and gritty like many of King’s other books, there was an entirely different atmosphere to this story. The overall feel reminded me of the animes Trigun and Vampire Hunter D, both of which I adore. The morally-gray lone gunman treks through a barren world on a single-minded quest of revenge against a man who embodies a chaotic, ruthless evil.

Station Eleven intrigued me from the moment I first heard about it. A post-apocalyptic America, decimated by a modern plague, explored through the eyes of disparate characters in a book that defies genre. Granted, I had a bit of a selfish motivation in picking this one as I’ve already been working on a novel set in a post-apocalyptic America, so I’m interested in seeing how other authors have approached the idea. But while the premise sounds like a classic sci-fi/zombie story setup, the approach in Station Eleven is almost profoundly realistic. It spans the catastrophe that created the new world, jumping back and forth between before and after, and from character to character.

One thing that really made the book effective for me was the narration of mundane, everyday events, and how they were affected-- or not-- by the breakdown of society. This, together with the depictions of how the tragedy affected each character differently based on their generation and life experience, gave an effect of the uncanny.

Soooo it’s halfway through January and I’ve already read four books-- (thank youuuu, audiobooks + long commute) --so let’s get this show on the road!

First up was Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake. Technically, I started this book at the end of last year, but it was long enough that it took me into January to finish. It was a recommendation from a friend of a friend, who had described it as being weird and dark, but with an immersive world and interesting characters. I found that description to be spot-on. Weird books are good, because it always means it’s something different and unique. And this book was certainly that. My first impression was that it was very slow. Before I knew it, I was on Chapter 22, nothing of seeming importance had really happened, and I still wasn’t even sure what the heck the plot was supposed to be. The eponymous character is born at the beginning of Chapter One, and, as a baby, isn’t a very integral part of the story. Instead the book centers around the castle and kingdom he will inherit, and he diverse cast of characters responsible for his upbringing. I love complicated, gray characters-- characters that are neither totally good nor bad-- and this book has them in spades.

I’ve always loved writing. And books. But for some reason it took *coughmumble* years of my life to realize that maybe it would be fun to write... about books! What.

Last year I set a goal of reading 50 books. Unfortunately, I didn’t make this goal until about April, and a lot of the books I wanted to read were... uh... rather hefty. So I didn’t quite reach it. Nonetheless, I managed to get through 41. I thought I’d start this blog with a debrief of my 2019 in books-- one book that I liked, one I hated, and one that was just meh. If you are new to this blog (as I am, right now), hopefully this will grant a little insight into the kinds of books you may expect to see reviewed on this new tumblog. So, without further ado...

the GOOD:

The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

I know, I know. He’s an ancient supernatural being, she’s a normal young human... we’ve seen this many times before. But Chakraborty’s the Daevabad Trilogy exemplifies a current trend (that I totally love) of mining less common mythologies from all over the world to breathe new life into common setups. Djinn are just one of the variety of mythical creatures you’ll encounter. And frankly, the paranormal romance isn’t the main thread in this book. It’s filled with action, drama, complex characters, and intricate plotting. Through Chakraborty’s descriptions, the magical city of Daevabad brims with enchantment. I reached the final series of twists just as a tornado was literally tearing through my town... and I kept reading by candlelight because I couldn’t put it down! That’s how good it is.

Look forward to my review of the trilogy’s second book, The Kingdom of Copper, in the coming months!

Other GOOD books I read in 2019 that I would 100% recommend (listed in no particular order): 

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Circe by Madeline Miller

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

the BAD:

Air Awakens by Elise Kova

Apparently this book is popular. I don’t get it. I tried to give it a chance, and did actually finish it, but by the end I just wanted to throw it across the room.

It had many good points-- an interesting world, interesting magic, some almost interesting characters. But then the author proceeds to JUST TOTALLY IGNORE IT ALL and invest all of the pages in the high-school love drama. There are at least 3 love interests for the main character and NONE of them are likeable, least of all the one that we are (apparently) supposed to be rooting for. He’s abusive and mean, and has just about zero redeeming qualities.

And on top of that, the writing is BAD. The dialogue is stilted, the wrong homophone is used instead of the one that’s meant. But the worst, above all, was the frequency with which dialogue tags contained an adverb that either 1) was redundant and therefore unnecessary or 2) directly contradicted whatever it was the character had just said. Ugh.

Other BAD books I read in 2019:

I don’t dislike a lot of books... but The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud, while not exactly badly written, had some really long tedious tangents and was full of characters I couldn’t stand living lives I couldn’t relate to. Definitely a “skip it” for me.

There were also several books I might have liked except for the fact that the author was so grossly, blatantly sexist. These included Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein (which actually went on my Did Not Finish because, EW) and American Shaolin by Matthew Polly (which was actually really enjoyable until the end, when the sexism became way too apparent).

the MEH:

Okay, maybe “meh” isn’t the right name for this category. There were books I read that were generally pretty good, but just had one or two flaws I couldn’t get past. In this category I’d put the Inheritance Cycle (Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, and Inheritance) by Christopher Paolini, which was in a lot of ways amazing-- a rich world, lots of imaginative creatures and characters, a relatively interesting plot-- but some really questionable characters and plot holes that just held me back from loving it completely.

In this category I’d also put The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar, which combined a lot of things I love-- linguistics, maps, mythology, Middle Eastern Culture, and current social events-- and was beautifully written. Unfortunately, I felt it went just a little too far in trying to draw historical parallels, to the point where it risked losing believability.

Other MEHs:

Kill the Farm Boy by Delilah S. Dawson, Keven Hearne

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware

Na Akua by Clayton Smith

Susannah Morrow by Megan Chance