240 replies to this topic

[Katia11]

Here's how I would have written it: the voice in Nat's head isn't a magic drakon, but an affliction she has to deal with as she and Wes journey across the tundra. The Blue isn't Avalon; it's a myth, a pipe dream created by people who can't bear the bleakness of the real world. Nat and Wes weather the dangers of the Pacific together, but they never find the mystical Blue. Instead, they find something else, some other port or haven or secret that makes life worth living. In the end, they discover that there are no easy solutions to the world's problems, no magical escapes...but at least they have each other. And when it comes down to it, that's enough.

 

THAT'S the kind of book I'd like to read.

 

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

 

I'd read the crap out of that book.

[Mara=^.^=]

I just wrapped up The Glass Arrow by Kristen Simmons, a dystopian novel set in what is presumably the distant future of our own world.

 

 

If I had to describe this book in three words, it'd be "patriarchy on steroids".

 

The setting consists of a polluted, overcrowded city and the wilderness that surrounds it. The city is horrifying: hunger, disease, and corruption are rampant, and a group of powerful men known as The Magnates rule with an iron fist. In this city, women are considered property, in the most literal sense of the term. They are bought and sold like chattel slaves, and there's a whole complex economy and set of beliefs that surround this practice. Women are more or less brainwashed from birth to believe that sex and baby-making are their primary duties, and they dream of finding "forever husbands" - men who who won't dump them back into the markets once they've popped out a couple of kids. Meanwhile, poverty in the outlying towns is so intense that people often sell their excess daughters to The Garden, the city facility that houses, prepares, and alters young women who are destined for auction. The sad thing is, many of these hapless families truly believe that their daughters will have better lives within the city, even if it comes at the cost of their freedom. It's a psychological coup d'état: the oppressed are complicit in their own oppression.

 

Aya is not a city girl. She's not a town girl either. She grew up "wild", living feral and free in the high mountains with her mother, aging auntie, and cousins.  Her upbringing affords her a sense of self-sufficiency and pride, along with the belief that nobody has the right to own her. Unfortunately, strength of will means nothing in the face of a far-reaching, authoritarian power structure. A hunting party in the woods discovers her camp and kills two of her family members, then takes Aya captive. She is brought into the city, and that's when the nightmare truly begins. Aya is locked inside The Garden and given a new name, but she fights her captors like a wild animal. She does everything she can to avoid being sold - she gets into fights, injures herself, even plays dead on stage. During her stints in solitary confinement (AKA, chained to a shed in the back lot), she befriends a stray wolf-dog who keeps her from despair. She also becomes 'half-friends' with Daphne, an unhappy, bratty young woman who is clearly trying to suppress her latent homosexuality. But, no matter how hard she tries, Aya cannot escape from the facility.

 

After 107 days inside The Garden, Aya gets into a particularly nasty fight that lands her a month-long sentence in solitary. There, on the other side of the fence, she sees the boy who will become her first true friend away from home. He's a "Driver", which makes him almost as powerless as she is. Drivers are outcasts, members of a caste of untouchables who live in mountain settlements far outside the city walls. Drivers are famous for being mute and for having no language; they tend to the horses the Magnates use for sport. They cover themselves in dirt and keep their heads down, and city folk deliberately ignore them - but not Aya. At first, she's terrified of her Driver neighbor. She tries to hurt him, fight him, hit him with a rock. But he keeps coming to visit her, and once it's clear he's not a threat, she begins to talk to him. He sits with her at night and listens to her tell stories about her loved ones, her beliefs, and her fears. She nicknames him Kiran, and she pours her heart out, because she believes he cannot understand a single word she's saying. As Aya grows to trust him more, she begins to have nightmares that he will buy her, possess her, take her freedom. Her desire to flee grows stronger.

 

She pulls a crazy stunt during her next trip to the auction, hoping to alienate potential buyers, but it backfires. The mayor buys her as a plaything for his nine-year-old son, and Aya is made to endure a humiliating and painful medical exam to ensure her 'purity', before being shipped off to his high-security estate. Her new master is a wee little tyrant who forces her to eat from a doggie dish and tortures her when she 'misbehaves'. She attempts to run away, and on her way out she encounters Kiran, who's entered the grounds on false pretenses in order to rescue her. They escape together, and from this point on the book becomes an extended chase scene. Against her better judgment, Aya goes back to save Daphne, and it almost gets Kiran killed. Masquerading as castoffs and plague victims, the three leave the city and go in search of Aya's cousins. During this whole debacle, Aya makes a shocking discovery: Kiran CAN talk, and he's understood everything she's said since Day 1. Turns out, Drivers only pretend to be mute - after all, when you live in an oppressive dystopia, it pays to be invisible. A bunch of other crazy shit happens, Kiran almost dies when his wounds become infected, and there are several big reveals that I won't spoil. Long story short, Aya discovers who her real father is, and she finds out that her cousins have been taken to the city. She returns to save her family, and although she manages to liberate two of them, they aren't able to make a clean getaway. They flee into the mountains, pursued by 'Watchers' - genetically-modified, partially-lobotomized soldiers that the Magnates use to hunt down criminals and runaways. Aya realizes that there is no escape, at least not for her. She is valuable property, and no matter how far she runs, she will be pursued until her dying day. So she chooses the last course of action left to her: she decides to fake her own death. She eats an herb that slows her heartbeat, and Kiran shoots her with a bow and arrow and leaves her for the search party to find. The ruse works. The last pages have her waking up, and Kiran tells her that her family has been granted sanctuary among the Drivers.

 

Despite being a bit heavy-handed, The Glass Arrow is interesting because it differs thematically from other YA dystopian novels I've read. In a more typical narrative, the protagonist would become part of a movement dedicated to overthrowing the evil regime that runs her world. In this book, no such movement exists. The moral of the story is clear: sometimes, it's impossible to fix what's broken. Sometimes, the best you can do is carve out a life for yourself within the nightmare. It's a cynical but realistic theme, and it gives the story impact. The author goes out of her way to show the damage slavery does to the oppressed and the oppressors alike: in a world divided, everyone is robbed of their humanity. The slaves cope in many ways. Some women embrace their captivity. Some women exploit other women. Some kill themselves to be free. All these responses feel authentic, as do Aya's feelings of helplessness, rage, and defiance. Her struggles with love and trust are super compelling as well. She's attracted to Kiran, but she cannot distinguish between consensual romance and non-consensual ownership. Her society provides no model for love between equals, so she fears that a relationship with him will mean the loss of her autonomy. Despite this, she yearns for connection, and she hates herself for it. It's quite tragic, and I actually wish this aspect of the story had been explored further.

 

The book has other faults too. The world building is inconsistent: for example, genetic engineering exists inside the city, but nobody ever uses it to ensure the birth of valuable male children instead of disposable female children. Baby girls are aborted or sold, which makes no sense if technology is advanced enough for in vitro fertilization. Parents could just choose the gender of their offspring and be done with it. In terms of character development, Aya is a fierce, resolute lead - but she spends so much of the narrative in survival mode that we never get to see her full range of quirks and interests. Kiran is likable, intelligent, and observant, but Daphne doesn't gets much screentime, and there's an unrelated jealousy subplot toward the end that I feel was unnecessary. I never really cared about Aya's cousins, so their rescue operation kind of fell flat as well. That said, it was still a decent book overall. Not great, but definitely good, and worth checking out if you have nothing better to read.

 

 

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[SweeneyxxTodd]

I've heard so many mixed things about that book for months.

[Mara=^.^=]

Yeah, it definitely has its problems, but it still feels like a valiant attempt on the author's part. I think the last 1/3 of the book is where I lost interest. It's just...missing something. The Drivers as a group become so important so suddenly - I feel like we needed more info on them to make their role believable. Another issue is that a few of the girls in The Garden were catty in a way that seemed too contemporary, like teeny boppers fighting over a crush at school. Women raised in a culture so different from ours would process information differently, in my opinion.

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[Thore]

The city from the Glass Arrow sounds sooo much like the city in my current campaign. Not sure why but dystopian stuff seems to be all the rage in like every circle I am involved with right now. 

 

Also for some reason Google is trying to correct dystopian to utopian... 

[SweeneyxxTodd]

Also for some reason Google is trying to correct dystopian to utopian... 

 

They're part of the establishment!

[Mara=^.^=]

I hadn't intended to dive directly into another nightmare-fuel book right after The Glass Arrow, buuuuut...well, it was just sitting there on my table, and I couldn't resist. If The Glass Arrow was a horror story for the teeny bopper crowd, A Madness So Discreet is a horror story for adults.

 

 

 

Grace Mae does not speak. Her existence is the worst kind of living nightmare: she's trapped inside an insane asylum in 1890s Boston, but she's not crazy. She was committed by her father, a U.S. Senator and disgusting serial rapist who sexually assaulted and impregnated his own teenage daughter, then locked her away to hide the crime. At the asylum, Grace is forced to endure various "treatments" - which are, to the modern eye, grossly unethical and ineffective. She's tormented by a sadistic nurse and plagued by visions of her past; Grace has a photographic memory, and for a person in her situation, it's the worst kind of curse. After she fork-stabs a visiting doctor who gets a little too handsy, she is beaten and tortured so intensely that she miscarries her baby. It's only then that she finds her voice again: she screams and fights and rages until she is thrown in the mud-soaked lower level of the asylum, which is no more than a dungeon. There, she befriends another patient - Dr. Falsteed, who was committed for trying to inoculate himself against cancer by eating it. He sits in his cell like a spider in its web, monitoring all the comings and goings of the asylum with the help of his man-on-the-inside, Reed. Dr. Falsteed finds out about her exceptional memory, and he decides to help her escape the prison.

 

Turns out, the basement isn't just a place where misbehaving patients are punished...it's also where the traveling surgeon Dr. Thornhollow conducts lobotomies on the most dangerous and violent offenders. Dr. Thornhollow and Dr. Falsteed are old colleagues, and although Falsteed is the one who's imprisoned, they're both a little bit crazy. Thornhollow is an experimenter on the cutting edge of medicine and criminal psychology, and he's totally got that mad scientist vibe. He's a brilliant thinker, but he doesn't understand human emotion and would probably be some kind of serial killer if not for his clear devotion to justice. He reminded me a bit of Professor Stein from Soul Eater, and he has some of the best sarcastic one-liners in the whole book. The first time Grace talks to Thornhollow, he's spattered in another patient's blood. She begs him to operate on her, to destroy the part of her brain that allows her to think and feel and remember. Dr. Falsteed interrupts and tells Thornhollow about her quick mind and photographic memory, but Thornhollow waves him off. He takes Grace into the operating room and shows her his box of scary nightmare tools, including the apple corer that he uses to destroy his patients' frontal lobes. He also questions her about her gifts, and in the end, he refuses to perform the surgery, saying that there's "a much better use" for her.

 

She and Thornhollow concoct a plan to fake a lobotomy - he slices up the corners of her head and wraps her in bandages, and she perfectly imitates the silent, witless mien of a lobotomized patient. The asylum director is appalled when he finds out, because he promised Grace's dad that she'd be returned home in nine months, unharmed. To cover his own ass, the director has Thornhollow spirit Grace out of the asylum in the dead of night, then informs the Senator that his daughter has died in a tragic accident. Thornhollow and Grace leave Boston and head to Ohio, where they both take up residence at one of the country's few ethical and pleasant asylums. To hide her identity, Grace pretends to be mute, masquerading as a patient in the doctor's care. She talks to no one but him, but she does manage to make friends with a couple of girls from the asylum - a feisty, wickedly funny Irish lass named Nell, who is dying of Syphilis, and a quiet but perceptive girl named Elizabeth who attributes her observations to an imaginary entity called "String" who lives just above her shoulder.

 

Then, one night, Dr. Thornhollow shows up in the wee hours and rouses her from sleep. He loads her up in his carriage and takes her to a murder scene, and it soon becomes clear what "use" the good doctor has in mind for her. Thornhollow's passion is the emerging field of criminal profiling, and Grace is the perfect partner for a man with this particular hobby. She is able to memorize every detail of the crime scene, and because people think she is a witless, mute bystander, they say things in front of her that they wouldn't say in front of an ordinary person. With each new death, the two would-be detectives hone their craft, rehashing the facts and speculating on the traits of the perpetrator. Despite the dark nature of their pursuit, Thornhollow and Grace are drawn to it. Thornhollow is fascinated by the puzzle aspect, and Grace has already seen true evil, so blood and gore don't phase her. They become comrades, and a sense of mutual respect grows between them as they challenge each other to be more clever, more insightful, more logical. At first, the murders are easy to solve - a drunken fight, a jilted wife shooting her husband, that sort of thing. But then a different sort of murderer appears: a serial killer who targets young women, and no matter how hard Thornhollow and Grace try, they cannot identify him.

 

While all this is going on, Grace is doing everything she can to keep tabs on her little sister back in Boston, who is sure to become her father's next target now that Grace is presumed dead. She also has to deal with her father coming to town as part of his election tour, but with the help of Thornhollow, Nell, and Elizabeth, she manages to get through it. The girls share a particularly touching scene on the asylum roof, proving that sometimes family are the people you choose, not the people whose blood you share. Unfortunately, Nell commits suicide not long afterward to spare herself a slow and painful death from Syphilis. Grace just loses it. She has to be locked inside a padded room, as all her rage and grief at the unfairness of the world comes pouring out. She emerges from the episode cold and emotionless, but she finds newfound purpose when she finally discovers the identity of the serial killer. She tells Dr. Thornhollow, but the police haven't connected the victims and there's not enough evidence to convict him. Grace is so sick of seeing women suffer that she decides to take matters into her own hands. She approaches the murderer alone, and for a second I was afraid that she was going to get kidnapped, and we'd have to go through the whole ordeal of her getting saved and learning not to do stupid shit by herself. Instead, she f*cking MURDERS the guy, and it's fantastic. Dr. Thornhollow is the only person who discovers the truth, and although he's furious, he doesn't rat her out.

 

Instead, they take one of the serial killer's victims and turn her death to a higher purpose: with the help of Elizabeth's (perjured) testimony, they frame Grace's dad for murder and rape. Grace remembers the names of all the women he assaulted within the house, and she makes sure they are notified so that they can add their voices to the trial. As publicity increases, more and more women come out of the woodwork...because surprise, surprise, he's a monster. Grace attends the proceedings in disguise, along with Thornhollow's spitfire suffragette sister. However, just when it looks like he will be convicted and sentenced to death, Thornhollow's testimony provides grounds for an insanity defense. It's deliberate, too - turns out, the doctor cannot stomach capital punishment and doesn't want to see a man hanged for a murder he didn't technically commit. At first Grace is furious, but then she realizes that her father will be incarcerated inside the very same horror-asylum she endured in Boston, and she recognizes the punishment for what it is: poetic justice. In one final act of revenge against her father, she visits him in the holding cell and reveals her role in his conviction. When he threatens to tell everyone the truth, she leaves him with the line "Go ahead, father. Nothing you say will be believed. You're insane."

 

BAD. ASS.

 

The book ends with Thornhollow and Grace resuming their usual routine as amateur detectives. Grace's sister is removed to the care of her aunt, and Grace and Elizabeth continue to cope with Nell's suicide. Life still isn't fair, and tragedy abounds, but Grace is content.

 

I've never read a historical thriller quite like this one before. It morphed from an exposé on patient abuse to a detective novel to a feminist manifesto and back again. Grace was a believably tortured protagonist, Nell was super lovable, and Dr. Thornhollow was fascinating in his darkness and his light. The author clearly did a lot of research, and the reason this book is so scary is that it's based on real events. Shit like this actually happened. Shit like this still happens. One of the central themes of the novel is that sanity and insanity aren't necessarily a dichotomy, especially in a world where nothing seems to make sense. It gets a little lost amidst the murder mystery narrative, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. There's definitely some questions about the role of vigilante justice floating around too, and I'm pretty sure the author falls into the "justice over lawfulness" camp. If I had to find fault with this book, I'd say that the writing is stiff in places, although this particular flaw does not extend to the dialogue. I'm also a bit unnerved by the ending; I dislike Thornhollow's assertion that Grace's dad is insane. He's not crazy - he's an evil rapist. He deserves no mercy. I understand that poetic justice is at play here, and that life in the Boston asylum is a fate worse than death, but his sentence still sends a disturbing message. My biggest issue with the book, though, is that it's a standalone novel. It needs to be a series like Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries or Poirot or Sherlock. I want to see more of the half-mad doctor and his mental patient as they catch bad guys in 1890s Ohio. A Madness So Discreet feels like the pilot episode for a gritty Netflix series - or maybe a BBC period piece, like Peaky Blinders. Please, please give it to me. I have a powerful need.

 

Sigh.

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

P.S. I cannot believe this book has almost the same Goodreads rating as Frozen. That is CRIMINAL.

[JimmyxxCindy4EVER]

H-holy........... Heisenberg... That is WAY worse than anything I'VE come up with!! *faints*

[Mara=^.^=]

I mean, yeah. History is full of evil shit.

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[Mara=^.^=]

Just finished Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge.

 

 

 

This book is a work of genius. I've never read anything else quite like it. The only thing I can think to compare it to is Miyazaki's Spirited Away - both are steeped in surreal otherness, but Spirited Away has an air of summertime about it, whereas Cuckoo Song has the crisp, creepy, dead-leaf feeling of late autumn.

 

Summarizing this story in any way does it a disservice, but I'll do my best. The year is 1920, and 13-year-old Triss wakes up one day to find that everything is just...off somehow. Reality has shifted, or perhaps she has shifted, and now the world just doesn't quite line up. It's little things at first. Her parents tell her that she returned home the night before, sopping wet and running a fever - but Triss can't remember it. She can't remember falling into the lake, and some of her other memories are jumbled and strange. It's like she doesn't belong inside her own life. At first, Triss assumes she's ill - she's ill a lot of the time, it turns out - but as the days pass, things get weirder and weirder. She discovers that the pages from her diaries have been ripped out, and she begins to see things that make no sense. Her dolls turn and look at her, she finds leaves sprinkled on her pillow upon waking, and she's consumed by an inhuman, ravenous appetite. She tries to fight her growing panic, tries to convince herself that everything is normal, but then she realizes that her hair turns into leaves when it falls out. She begins to eat her own possessions. She cries spiderwebs. Turns out Triss isn't Triss at all.

 

Not-Triss, as she begins to call herself, is a changeling, sent to replace the real Triss, who is being held captive by a mysterious foe. Not-Triss is devastated; after all, she has all the memories of her human counterpart, all the love and hate and confusion of a real little girl. But unlike a real little girl, she has thorn teeth and claws and an insatiable appetite - and she only has seven days to live. Seven days before the spell holding her together wears off, and she falls apart. In the space of one week, Not-Triss must untangle the series of events that led to her creation so that she can save her other self. Her journey of discovery is creepy and dark and atmospheric, but also surprisingly heartfelt. The book offers a nuanced exploration of a family twisted by grief, set against the backdrop of a world still reeling from the Great War. Fey-magic and tragedy and love and self-revelation all mingle together in an incredibly compelling narrative. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is that Not-Triss comes to understand the real Triss and her family better than Triss herself ever could.

 

I cannot praise this book enough. The author is some kind of mad genius when it comes to language choice: every word, every sentence contributes to the feeling of otherness in the prose, the feeling that something is eerily off-kilter. She is a master of simile and metaphor, and the text is loaded with things being described as other things, which helps contribute to the surreal quality of the book. Time and time again I was shocked by the descriptions she employed; they were so apt, yet so utterly unlike anything I would have ever invented myself. Some of her comparisons and turns of phrase reminded me of the poetic, bizarrely-beautiful things children say before they master their first language. I'd recommend reading the book for this reason alone, but the plot is great too. The world-building has the perfect ratio of questions to answers. Cuckoo Song isn't like most mysteries, where the big "reveal" is kind of a let down after all the suspense. It's a series of tiny mysteries and tiny reveals, and all of them feel authentic in how delightfully strange they are. The author creates a reality where concepts act as concrete forces, and where the mere existence of an idea can impact the denizens of an other-world that is both like and unlike our own.

 

In case you hadn't already guessed, the protagonist is fantastic - she's so deeply human despite being a mere facsimile of one. The book is populated by memorable characters, although nobody is who they seem to be on the surface. Cuckoo Song is an exploration of who people are at every level of their being - it's an examination of what remains when you strip away what you think you know about someone. Not-Triss's relationship with Triss's younger sister Pen is perhaps the best example of this. Triss and Pen hate each other, but Not-Triss and Pen forge a bond that is touching and fierce and sad. Thanks to this relationship, Not-Triss learns the values of compassion, honesty, bravery, and self-sacrifice...and she learns what strengths and failings lurk in the hearts of those closest to her. The thing I find most fascinating about Cuckoo Song is that the fantasy elements make these revelations feel more real, not less, and I think it's because of how familiar the fantastical aspects are. It's the kind of fey-magic we all remember from childhood: omnipresent, but just out of reach, like something seen out of the corner of one's eye. It's dangerous and unpredictable and other, but somehow essential. The world feels a little less real without it.

 

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[Mara=^.^=]

Have you ever read a book with a stellar premise that was just ruined by mediocre writing? The Girl from Everywhere is that book to a T.




Premise: Nix is a teenage girl living out every history nerd's greatest fantasy: her father is a Navigator, a rare individual with the power to leap across centuries, across continents, across myth. As long as her father has a fresh map for it, he can sail to any time, any place, real or imagined. Nix spends her days traveling aboard her father's ship, The Temptation, along with a small crew of castoffs from various eras. There's Rotgut, a former monk and the ship's current cook, Bee, a woman from ancient Africa who believes her wife's ghost is with her at all times, and Kashmir, a charming thief from a mythical version of the Middle East.

Unfortunately, all is not well aboard The Temptation. For as long as she can remember, Nix's father has been searching for a map that will take him back to 1860s Hawaii so that he can prevent his long lost love from dying in childbirth. His pursuit is feverish, unwavering, obsessive; he's willing to sacrifice anyone and anything to get there, including Nix. After all, altering her mother's fate might change Nix's whole life story or even erase her from existence altogether. With this shadow hanging over her head, Nix yearns for the day when her father will teach her how to Navigate so that she can strike out on her own, away from all the things she hates about the here and now...if there even is such a thing as the here and now.

Cool idea, right? I certainly thought so when I read the synopsis. Unfortunately, the author just...isn't very good. Reading this book was like watching someone throw confetti, only to have it turn into a soggy paper towel in midair and fall to the floor with a splurt. Disappointing, and also a bit baffling. The biggest problem, I'd say, was the quality of the prose itself. There was no life to the writing, no breath, no rhythm and cadence. Everything felt wooden and clunky and dull. And hey, for a book about travel through time and space, there was very little traveling involved. The majority of the story took place in 1880s Hawaii, and although the author made sure to include lots of interesting historical factoids, the setting never felt real to me. Everything was muddy, somehow. I felt like I couldn't see the locations clearly...probably because the descriptions were as boring and lifeless as the rest of the prose. NOT as boring as the main character, however, who had less personality than that soggy paper towel I mentioned earlier. Oh, and did I mention that there was a love triangle thrown in there for some reason? For about five seconds I thought she'd end up with both of them - but in two different timelines - thanks to the complexities of Navigation. But nope, that would've been clever. Instead, we get an ending that isn't really an ending because this is going to be a series. I can only hope the author learns to write by the time she's finished with them all.

Ugh. I know I am being SUPER harsh on this book, but that's only because it had SO MUCH POTENTIAL. There were brilliant ideas sprinkled throughout...themes about fate, the inevitability of loss, and the nature of what counts as "real". The way the maps worked in the story was SO freaking cool, and although Bee and Rotgut were sorely underdeveloped, I loved their character concepts. Kashmir was roguish and tons of fun, and even the other boy, Blake - with his gift for art and his love for Hawaiian mythology - had a sort of doomed charm to him that I found compelling. Nix's father could've been interesting if the author had been willing to commit to the obsession angle and hadn't watered him down at the end. But there were so many problems with the plot and the pacing...and I still have no idea how most of the "rules" of Navigation work. And why am I supposed to care about Nix, again?

Sigh. Soggy paper towel.


~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[SweeneyxxTodd]

I had just as much disappointment, and then plenty of anger, when I read Zodiac last year.

[underwater]

Bummer. Sounds like a cool idea. Too bad it was squandered

 

 

Corinne

[Mara=^.^=]

Just finished Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt.

 

 

 

First of all, is that not the greatest title ever? I think it is.

 

This book documents the true story of a murder case in Savannah, Georgia which gained national fame for generating more mistrials than any other case in history. The first half of the novel reads like a series of vignettes - little character studies that help set the tone and populate the narrative with a set of (outlandishly memorable) townsfolk. The second half delves deeper into the four trials and their aftermath.

 

This isn't really the kind of book that I can summarize very well, beyond what I've detailed above. If you're a fan of historical accounts, colorful characters, and/or murder mysteries, this is definitely worth checking out.

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[Mara=^.^=]

Next up: Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys. The same author also wrote Out of the Easy, which I really enjoyed, so I decided to give her newest book a spin.

 

 

 

The book, which is set during WWII, follows four young adults who have been displaced and/or traumatized by the war as they converge on a German refugee ship that will take them to safety. The prose is swift, the chapters short, and the tragedies that befall the characters are both the type we've numbly come to expect from WWII accounts, and ones that are jarringly horrific. There are a handful of descriptions that are just so freaking disturbing - which is hardly surprising, since the story details the largest maritime disaster in human history, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. I was absolutely SHOCKED that I had never heard of the Wilhelm or its destruction, because I've read a LOT of WWII stuff, watched a lot of documentaries, and listened to a lot of podcasts on that time period. Everyone's heard of the Titanic or the Lusitania, but they've got NOTHING on this shit.

 

The thing that most stands out in my mind about this book is that the author managed to create one of the most supremely unlikable characters I've ever encountered who wasn't an outright villain. Alfred is such a pathetic piece of shit - every POV chapter he gets just confirms, over and over again, what a slimy and wormy little toad he is. There is literally nothing redeemable about this guy, and it's fascinating. He's like the embodiment of the worst reddit fedora dude in existence, but worse, because he's a literal member of the Nazi party. My skin crawls just thinking about him, but at the same time I pity him, because he's probably never had a friend in his life.

 

Anyway, this was a super fast read, so if you like WWII stories, this isn't a bad one to pick up. Be prepared for lots of character deaths, though (including some of the main characters who narrate the story).

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[Mara=^.^=]

Just finished On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis.



I'm really not sure how to feel about this book. I picked it up because I adored the author's last novel, Otherbound, but this one was...not what I was expecting? Not what I wanted? I dunno.

Corinne Duyvis populates her novels with deliberately diverse characters - in Otherbound, the protagonists were an epileptic Nahua boy with one leg and a mute bisexual girl who communicated entirely in sign language. In On the Edge of Gone, the main characters are a biracial, autistic Dutch girl named Denise, her bisexual trans sister Iris, and their drug-addicted white mother. The prose is peppered with appearances by characters who don't fit the typical YA mold - people in wheelchairs, a kid with down syndrome, a Muslim couple who for some unfathomable reason are hesitant to eat non-halal food despite this being THE MOTHERF*CKING APOCALYPSE...but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The theme of the story is readily, painfully apparent: when the world is coming to an end, who is "worth" saving? Who "deserves" to survive? Unfortunately, the theme MASSIVELY overshadows the plot, to the point where...nothing really happens in the book. Much of the conflict takes place inside Denise's head, and while she's definitely an interesting protagonist, I just had so many other questions about what was going on outside the sphere of her experience. The story is fairly simple: a comet is going to hit Earth. Humanity has known about it for some time and has prepared. Some people win a lottery that affords them a place in one of the permanent underground shelters, where they can expect to live comfortably while the planet is in the throes of destruction. Others only manage to get into temporary shelters. The truly lucky ones get a place aboard the generation ships bound for a pair of planets far, far away. Denise and her mother miss the deadline for getting into their assigned temporary shelter because her mom is a piece of shit, but they wind up helping someone who, surprise surprise, is a worker aboard the only generation ship that hasn't left Earth yet. The take shelter there during the initial impact, but Denise's mom breaks the rules and gets them kicked out. Denise later saves some of the ship's crew from a post-impact tsunami, earning her a place on the roster despite her autism and lack of spaceship-related skills. The rest of the book consists of Denise trying to find her sister Iris, trying to earn a place for her family aboard the ship, and struggling to process all the crazy shit that's happening around her.

The first half of the book was pretty engrossing, but the second half did NOT sit right with me, for all sorts of reasons. The problem, I think, is that the author was trying to make a point, not tell a story. There were so many times that stuff just...didn't compute. For instance: in this imagined future, humanity possesses technology advanced enough to create self-sustaining generation ships capable of surviving hundreds of years in space. If mankind is this high tech, why the hell didn't we just send a probe up to make a tiny course correction to the damn comet? Do it early enough, and you only need nudge the thing a tiiiiiny bit to ensure that it misses Earth. How the hell does NASA not notice a giant glowing ice ball until it's too late to change its trajectory? And how come scientists can't predict precisely where the comet will hit? If physicists know the velocity and position of an approaching body, they should be able to calculate its point of impact. I mean, we can figure out EXACTLY where a Mars-bound probe will land, years in advance, just by completing a series of calculations. Is math not a thing in this future?

Scientific questions weren't the only things that pulled me out of the narrative. The book had a knack for making me, the reader, feel like a terrible person. I suspect that Corinne Duyvis and I have some radically different ideas about human nature...that, or she was deliberately needling her audience, trying to force them into the role of bad guy so that they'd question their own beliefs. I was SO angry at Denise and Iris when they decided to smuggle their mother aboard the generation ship. I mean, this is a vessel with a closed ecosystem and limited resources; it can only support so many people. Smuggling someone extra on board - someone with NO skills to contribute - is so f*cking selfish and irresponsible. Like, on an emotional level, I totally get it. Denise and Iris love their mom, despite the fact that she's a piece of shit. But they put everyone's life in danger by hiding her on the ship. And yeah, sure, drug addicts "matter" too, but so do the billions of other poor schmucks who weren't lucky enough to win a place aboard. What makes Denise and Iris so freaking special that they get to keep their family together, when most of the other people on the ship had to leave loved ones behind? I dunno. I just had no sympathy for the mother. If anyone "deserved" a spot on the ship, it certainly wasn't her. Were we as readers supposed to be rooting for the mom's survival? Or were we supposed to hate her? The author left it ambiguous, and I guess that's the point, but it still pissed me off because I wanted the narrative to despise her along with me.

Now that I think about it, I feel like the book was too...nuanced for my tastes? Too slow-paced? A lot of consideration was paid to issues of identity, morality, and shades of gray, but in my mind, the end of the world brings out the extremes of human nature. It's raw, unfiltered. We all know what happens in disaster situations. A portion of the population loots and riots. Society starts to pull apart at the seams. Acts of heroism and evil mingle together...sometimes committed by the same person. People enter survival mode, and things work differently in survival mode. Some of this stuff is mentioned briefly, but is never really explored, and I guess you could make the argument that it's an intentional omission, but I dunno. The characters in this book were too calm, too composed, too generous. Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I think humanity is a whole lot shittier than the author makes us out to be. I know exactly what kind of people would be picked for the generation ships. Young, brilliant, healthy, and ready to reproduce. Probably rich and/or politically connected. There's no way someone like Denise's mom would eventually be accepted on board. It just...it would never happen. And if it did happen, it would be wrong (and this is coming from me, a chronically ill person who would NEVER be given a spot aboard an evac ship...and rightfully so. The survival of the human race has to take precedence).

I did like the ending, at least - minus the part about her mother getting a spot. Denise's compromise with the captain was clever and unexpected. It saved the book for me. That, and there were a couple of pages toward the middle that were just GORGEOUSLY written. Ye gods, it was beautiful. If the whole book had been like that, I would've awarded it 5 stars.

As is, I'd say 3.5 stars. 3 on a grumpy day.

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[Mara=^.^=]

Next up: An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

 

 

I was expecting literally nothing from this book (I just randomly grabbed it off the "new arrivals" shelf at the library while I was hurrying out), so I was pleasantly surprised. The story takes place in like...fantasy evil!Rome and the surrounding lands?...and stars two vastly different people united by their secret hatred for the Empire: the elite soldier Elias, and rebel spy/slave girl Laia.

 

The plot is fairly basic. Laia is a member of the "Scholar People" (wtf kind of name is that?), an oppressed nation within the Martial Empire (again, couldn't the author have thought of better fantasy names?). After her brother is hauled off to prison for treason, she seeks out the support of an underground, badly-fractured rebel movement. In return for their help rescuing her brother, she pledges to become a spy for them within the Empire's deadliest military academy. There, Laia becomes a slave to The Commandant, who is like, female Hitler on steroids. Seriously, she's the most sadistic, evil, power-hungry, abusive, arbitrary mo'fucker on the goddamn planet. She's also Elias's mother...although she abandoned him in the desert at birth and hates his guts, so they don't have much of a relationship. Elias, meanwhile, has just become a full-fledged "Mask" - one of the Empire's elite assassins. Except surprise! he effing HATES being a Mask and is constantly on the hunt for a way to escape. He's all set to desert when word comes down from The Augurs (who are nigh-omniscient, immortal men and women who can read minds and see all the varied outcomes of the future) that the current Imperial dynasty is failing, and that he is now on the short list for new Emperor. He is informed that he must compete in "the trials", where he'll be facing off against Marcus, who is a douchebag of cosmic proportions, Marcus's kinder twin Zach, and Elias's own best friend Helene. The winner will become Emperor. The runner-up will be his or her right hand man, The Blood Shrike. The two losers will be executed.

 

So yeah, that's basically it. Elias has to struggle through the trials while dealing with his own massive guilt over being an assassin. Laia has to carry out increasingly dangerous missions while being beaten, scarred, and abused by The Commandant. Over the course of the novel, they meet in various circumstances and forge a connection. For Elias, the attraction seems to stem from his moral values: he hates the mistreatment of the Scholar people and wants to ban slavery. Laia sort of symbolizes all the things he believes in, all the people he wants to save. I had a harder time understanding Laia's interest in him. It seemed to be more physical than anything, especially considering the fact that her beloved grandparents were murdered by a Mask, and Laia was constantly terrified of Elias despite her attraction.

 

Elias fascinated me. He's so at war with himself, so conflicted, so wounded by his upbringing and profession. He's basically a conscientious objector who can only rebel in the tiniest of ways without risking death or torture. And his relationship with his best friend Helene is INCREDIBLY rich, nuanced, and captivating. So much so, in fact, that it overshadows his romance with Laia. I spent most of the novel wishing that Elias loved Helene the way she clearly loves him. Her loyalty to him is so complete, so desperate, that despite their vast philosophical differences, you can't help but appreciate her character. As the only female student at the academy (cuz of COURSE evil!Rome is sexist), she is steel-cold and razor-sharp, but beneath her killer instinct and blind reverence for The Augurs is a willingness to suffer for those she loves and a deep faith that she can save Elias by sacrificing her own heart and soul. Their friendship is so deep, so complex, and so heartbreaking. I felt myself rooting for her despite the fact that EliasxLaia is probably endgame because they're both fated to shake up the status quo or whatever. Laia's secondary love interest (yup - it's a love quadrangle this time!), her handler Keenan, was basically pointless romance-wise. I mean, he was still cool, but his character just felt...tacked on rather than fully developed.

 

I'm looking forward to the sequel. Evil!Rome desperately needs to be flushed down the drain of history. I want Marcus to get his ass kicked SO badly (did I mention he's a literal rapist? And he's constantly threatening to rape Helene and actually tries to rape Laia. This book had a disturbing tendency to use the 'rape for drama' trope). I want The Commandant to get what's coming to her. Don't really care if they rescue Laia's brother or not. Don't really care about the rebellion. But I super duper care about Elias and Helene, and I'm dreading their inevitable enmity. An Ember in the Ashes has its fair share of flaws, but I think the biggest problem with the book is that the relationship between Elias and Helene is just too good. It's the most compelling part of the narrative, but it's not the focus. If I were this author's editor, I would swoop RIGHT the f*ck down and be like "we do not need multiple conflicting romances. Focus on the bond between Elias and Helene. Make them go their separate ways as they each follow their differing political and spiritual beliefs, but keep their desperate love flickering beneath, to resurface in a sequel. For Elias and Laia, focus on their shared beliefs and burgeoning trust. They can be joint revolutionaries without being make-out buddies. Just sayin'."

 

Oh well. Still gonna give it 4 stars. 3.5 stars? 3.75 stars. A solid book, all things considered.

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[SweeneyxxTodd]

This book is sooooooo popular in the areas of the internet I hang around. Never felt much desire to read the book, though.

[Katia11]

"For Elias and Laia, focus on their shared beliefs and burgeoning trust. They can be joint revolutionaries without being make-out buddies. Just sayin'."

 

Gasp! People of the opposite sex can work together without sticking their tongues down each other's throats?? WHATTT??!?

[Mara=^.^=]

Read The Moorchild by Eloise Jarvis McGraw...quite awhile back, but never added it to the list.



This thing sat on our bookshelf in middle school, and I can't even count the number of times I pushed it aside while looking for new stuff to read. It was written by the same author as my all-time favorite book, Mara Daughter of the Nile, and I always meant to pick it up...but somehow I never got around to it. Well, 15 years later, I found it at my local library.

It's easy to see why the novel won a Newberry Honor Award. Eloise Jarvis McGraw's writing career spanned nearly 50 years, and she manages to create so much depth within a relatively simple plot. The protagonist of The Moorchild is Moql'nkkn, a half-human, half-folk changeling. At first she's raised by the faeries, but she fails to fit in and is deemed "a danger to the band". She's exchanged for a servile human baby and must start life all over again with a new name - Saaski - and only the faintest knowledge of her origins. Over time she forgets that she was ever a member of the folk, and she cannot understand why the superstitious people in her village treat her with such suspicion and contempt. Caught between two worlds, and belonging nowhere, Saaski/Moql must come to an understanding about her true nature and find a place she can call her own.

Sooo...thoughts: this is definitely an outcast/misfit story and will resonate with anyone who was ostracized as a child. Even though Saaski is a strange and even occasionally unsettling character, it is impossible not to empathize with her. I was rooting for her the entire time, and the ending was very satisfying.

I had a lot of fun with this book...I've been reading it out loud to my mom while she gardens, doing my best impression of an Irish accent during the dialogue bits. A+ summer entertainment

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =