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The most recent commute audiobook was The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, of The Night Circus fame (although admittedly I have not read that one yet). This is a fantasy novel about Zachary, a young man swept into the drama of a secret underground society and the mysterious figures who surround it.
I finished this book on Sunday morning, catching the last 7 minutes of a whopping 19-hour runtime over breakfast, and since then I've settled into a relative disappointment. On paper, this book has so many things that should make it an ace in the hole for me: Book lovers! Cats! Secret magical societies! Queer characters! Women who are something Other taking control of their destinies! And yet, overall, this book just did not land for me.
As is a risk, I think, with all stories that are about the power of stories, The Starless Sea comes off a little pretentious and self-important. It is a book lauding the unmatched importance of books. I felt aware at various points throughout the book of how hard it was trying to appeal to people like me, who would enjoy the idea of a dark-paneled underground room with endless books and an on-demand kitchen, and this sense of pandering did take away from it at times.
However, it also does some interesting things with regards to what it is like to be the person in a story (such as the fate of Eleanor and Simon, once their part in the story is done) as well as the risks of valuing preservation over change and growth. Without giving too much away, there is a secret society in decline, and a woman so determined to prevent its downfall that she ends up causing significant harm to the organization she's trying to save because she is unwilling to accept that an end comes for all things. I enjoyed this theme and I felt like it was echoed well throughout the story, and in many ways it's easy to sympathize with her ultimate goals, if not her methods.
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The great thing about online communities is you can get a lot of book recommendations from a broad swath of people that cover niche books you might never have heard of otherwise. The bad thing is that a lot of these books are simply not good. Nevertheless, I've plowed through quite a few net-recommended fantasy books, and I still think it's worth it for the occasional gem you overturn. I had the chance this last week to enjoy one of those gems: The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez.
Upfront, the style of this book is not going to be for everyone. It has an edge of the cerebral, being told primarily in second-person, from the perspective of an unnamed person watching a play performed by spirits in their sleep about the events of the adventure. Perspective can change suddenly and without announcement, and the book occasionally slides in thoughts of random third parties experiencing the events of the text.
I found all of these narrative tools a delight, although I admit I was skeptical for the first few pages. I think Jimenez does a wonderful job of using them effectively and the overall effect adds to the surreal/mythological energy of the entire story.
Jimenez's writing is beautiful and vivid—for good or for ill, as there are some gruesome events that take place—and really sweeps you up in the events of the story. He also does a wonderful job capturing the emotional mindsets of the characters. In particular, I thought the way he handled the relationship of the two main protagonists, Jun and Keema, was very realistic given who they are, and the emotional payoff of his taking the time to work through that was so worth it.
The plot of the novel is pretty simple: Jun and Keema are escorting the empress, the Moon goddess, from point A to point B. But Jimenez shows how a talented author can take a simple quest plot and transform it into something sweeping and epic. The story takes us across this fictional country, which has been laboring under the oppression of the Moon Throne and its emperor, known as the Smiling Sun. We see up close the impact of this emperor and his government, and the various ways that the populace is pushing back or knuckling under, trying to survive.
The empress herself is a fascinating character, and Jimenez handles so well this character who both possesses the power of a goddess who transformed the world, yet is deeply weakened after generations among mortals. She walks a compelling line between a being who wants to do right by the people, but still possesses the selfish impulses of a god.
He blends the truly mythological—the Moon goddess used to be the moon, and after she fell from the sky, the people named the black hole where the moon used to be "the Burn"—as well as the more intimate story beats we expect from modern storytelling, such as Jun's complicated relationship with his father. I thought this intermixing worked very well, allowing for both a grand scale, transformative tale as well as very personal, small-scale stories.
Even the side characters grab your attention, so that their parts of the story never feel like unwelcome intrusions and asides from the main plot, but rather equally interesting stories playing out alongside our protagonists' (I'm still thinking about Uhi Araya).
This story grabbed me from very early on and held on tight throughout the book; I was riveted to the end. A truly wonderful tale; I may end up buying a copy to have to reread later.
Frontier by Grace Curtis is a space western, which takes place far in the future after much of Earth's population has abandoned it due to catastrophic climate change.
Then a ship falls from the sky, bringing the planet's first visitor in three hundred years. This Stranger is a crewmember on the first ship in centuries to attempt a return to Earth and save what's left. But her escape pod crashes hundreds of miles away from the rest of the wreckage.
The Stranger finds herself adrift in a ravaged, unwelcoming landscape, full of people who hate and fear her space-born existence. Scared, alone, and armed, she embarks on a journey across the wasteland to return to her ship, her mission, and the woman she loves.
I really enjoyed the way this novel revealed its story. Rather than simply track the traveler from place to place, the story shows us the traveler's journey through the eyes of the people who encounter her: a small-town librarian at odds with the local mayor, the young son of a preacher with a nasty secret, a shady woman on a quest of her own. Each chapter opens with setting the perspective of this onlooker before the traveler comes into the scene, and I felt like this was a very fun and creative way of telling her story, as well as giving us a lot more information about the world and culture of Earth in this story's universe than we could get from the traveler's perspective alone.
Then a ship falls from the sky, bringing the planet's first visitor in three hundred years. This Stranger is a crewmember on the first ship in centuries to attempt a return to Earth and save what's left. But her escape pod crashes hundreds of miles away from the rest of the wreckage.
The Stranger finds herself adrift in a ravaged, unwelcoming landscape, full of people who hate and fear her space-born existence. Scared, alone, and armed, she embarks on a journey across the wasteland to return to her ship, her mission, and the woman she loves.
I really enjoyed the way this novel revealed its story. Rather than simply track the traveler from place to place, the story shows us the traveler's journey through the eyes of the people who encounter her: a small-town librarian at odds with the local mayor, the young son of a preacher with a nasty secret, a shady woman on a quest of her own. Each chapter opens with setting the perspective of this onlooker before the traveler comes into the scene, and I felt like this was a very fun and creative way of telling her story, as well as giving us a lot more information about the world and culture of Earth in this story's universe than we could get from the traveler's perspective alone.
The traveler herself is an excellent blend of competent and human: as an astronaut among a deeply Luddite population which has technologically stagnated for centuries, she has certain advantages, like her advanced weaponry, which can quickly resolve some situations. However, she can be divested of these advantages without enormous effort: if she loses her gun, if she's facing too many enemies, if she succumbs to bodily weakness like exhaustion or injury, she's no better off than any Earthling in her situation would be.
She certainly possesses a skillset that helps her through her journey, but she's also a person. She feels fear, anxiety, weariness. She has tells when she lies, she has moments of awkwardness, she makes mistakes. She's not Terminator in a cowboy hat blasting her way to victory while the challenges slide off her without a mark.
The romance was fine. Sweet, but unremarkable. I do enjoy more queer fantasy that doesn't center romance though, so that's a win!
Some other reviews felt the ending wrapped up too quickly, but personally I was satisfied. I didn't need a confrontation with the main antagonist drawn out any more; he was such a loathsome character that I simply wasn't interested in seeing more of him. I was content with where the book left things.
On the whole, I enjoyed this book more than I expected. It was just long enough to tell its story satisfactorily without overstaying its welcome. I enjoyed the detours into side characters that gave us colorful glimpses into what life is like on Earth for the locals rather than relegating us merely to the traveler's outsider perspective. It does leave lots of loose threads behind, but it felt realistic and never, for me, unsatisfying. Life goes on after the traveler has moved onto her next goal.
A fun read!
This week I finished When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill, a low-fantasy pseudo-historical novel where women occasionally and spontaneously become dragons.
Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours, except for its most seminal event: the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales, and talons; left a trail of fiery destruction in their path; and took to the skies. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex’s beloved aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn’t know. It’s taboo to speak of.
Forced into silence, Alex nevertheless must face the consequences of this astonishing event: a mother more protective than ever; an absentee father; the upsetting insistence that her aunt never even existed; and watching her beloved cousin Bea become dangerously obsessed with the forbidden.
Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours, except for its most seminal event: the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales, and talons; left a trail of fiery destruction in their path; and took to the skies. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex’s beloved aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn’t know. It’s taboo to speak of.
Forced into silence, Alex nevertheless must face the consequences of this astonishing event: a mother more protective than ever; an absentee father; the upsetting insistence that her aunt never even existed; and watching her beloved cousin Bea become dangerously obsessed with the forbidden.
I have mixed feelings on this book. On the one hand, I think the metaphor does work well and the theme of reclaiming power is rewarding. On the other, I think the book loses the plot partway through and I didn't find the author's prose particularly engaging.
Within the book, "dragoning" as it's called serves as an analogy for basically anything about women that society, historically, has not liked to discuss. This can be brutal things like domestic abuse, sexual assault, and harassment, but it can also be more seemingly mundane yet equally "uncomfortable" topics like ambition, lack of motherly sentiment, queerness, and menstruation/women's bodies generally. One woman dragons because she feels trapped in a marriage to an unpleasant and ungrateful husband. Another dragons because she realized she was in love with another woman. Thus, while dragoning can be analogous to female rage, it can also be analogous to female joy, expressed in a way that society finds unbecoming.
Some spoilers below.
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Ultimately, I agree with the conclusion that this book would have worked better as a concentrated short story focusing only on the Mass Dragoning of 1955. There's just not enough here to fill out the 340 pages in a satisfying way.
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rocky41_7
Some spoilers below.
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Ultimately, I agree with the conclusion that this book would have worked better as a concentrated short story focusing only on the Mass Dragoning of 1955. There's just not enough here to fill out the 340 pages in a satisfying way.
Crossposted from
rocky41_7 A+ Library is my bit where I review books with asexual and aromantic characters. The most recent book I've read was To be Taught, if Fortunate by Becky Chambers. The book description is:
At the turn of the twenty-second century, scientists make a breakthrough in human spaceflight. With the fragility of the body no longer a limiting factor, human beings are at last able to journey to neighboring exoplanets long known to harbor life.
A team of these explorers, Ariadne O'Neill and her three crewmates, are hard at work in a planetary system fifteen light-years from Sol, on a mission to ecologically survey four habitable worlds. But as Ariadne shifts through both form and time, the culture back on Earth has also been transformed. Faced with the possibility of returning to a planet that has forgotten those who have left, Ariadne begins to chronicle the story of the wonders and dangers of her mission, in the hope that someone back home might still be listening.
The character: Chikondi Daka, asexual
Final verdict: Thumbs up, a new favorite for this exerciseAt the turn of the twenty-second century, scientists make a breakthrough in human spaceflight. With the fragility of the body no longer a limiting factor, human beings are at last able to journey to neighboring exoplanets long known to harbor life.
A team of these explorers, Ariadne O'Neill and her three crewmates, are hard at work in a planetary system fifteen light-years from Sol, on a mission to ecologically survey four habitable worlds. But as Ariadne shifts through both form and time, the culture back on Earth has also been transformed. Faced with the possibility of returning to a planet that has forgotten those who have left, Ariadne begins to chronicle the story of the wonders and dangers of her mission, in the hope that someone back home might still be listening.
The character: Chikondi Daka, asexual
( Full review below )
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