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lezreadalot's review against another edition
5.0
I did it because I had to, because human beings cannot live without history.
4.5 stars. N. K. Jemisin's blurb at the front of this book says something to the effect of, "You need to read this very slowly and carefully and when you're finished you need to read it again." And I completely agree with that. And I don't think that's a good thing. I had to read the first part of this book about three times before the plot and the writing really started sinking into my head. That's not a compliment. I love when I read a line of prose and I immediately want to reread it because it's so beautiful and striking and impactful; I hate when I have to do it because I literally couldn't parse it. Maybe it says something more about my own reading comprehension than it says anything about the book, but this kind of density feels more hostile than anything. Not just the writing, but the fact that there was no context, and lots of time I just felt adrift as a reader. I hate info-dumping, but give me something. Lovely writing is the surest form of kryptonite for me, and it can really elevate my enjoyment of a book. But inscrutability does not equate to beauty! I'm right and I should say it! Fight me about it!
The swordmaiden wears her loyalty like a necklace of dead stars. Their worth is eternal, although they no longer shine.
Uh, all that aside... I really fucking love this book lol. Four women, one rebellion and an incomparably wonderful and well-woven story. This is the kind of fantasy that I yearn for, the kind of ideas and prose and beauty that make me really enjoy reading. The world and the world-building are complex, but once you start to peel back the layers and get into the intricacies of the families and relationships, the religion and gods, the history and the people, the different tribes... the amalgamation of it all is really, really something. I really liked all the characters and the way we interrogated this war through their histories and their lives and their actions, but once I started to understand things, the plot really really shone for me. Things really picked up for me in Part Two when we started to go more in depth into the different forms of worship in this world. The Stone as a concept is so interesting to me, and I feel like I would have liked to spend even more time with it. While I did not enjoy the pace at which we were given information about the actual characters who we were following, I do think that some of the reveals about the history and mythology of the world were really well done, and we slowly learned about things that became more and more impactful for both the characters and the story in a huge way. The book is divided into four parts, and each of them have their slow moments that drag on a little bit, but they all did manage to grab me back in the end. Thematically, this book just went to some places that I absolutely eat up and I adored the ending. There's often a moment in books when the significance of the title hits you, and that moment in this book was so, so good.
Your body remembers war. This body I love. War has shaped the beloved body.
I had my ups and downs with the writing, but this is truly, truly artistic in a lot of ways. Some of those ways didn't really work for me. The author has a tendency of sort of slipping into a flashback, in the middle of a paragraph, sometimes in the middle of a sentence, so much so that you're not actually sure where you are in terms of time. That gets a little frustrating sometimes, even though I know it's deliberate and done for style. There were a few sections where she eschewed quotation marks, which, I never care the reason why an author chooses to do that, it's just always annoying. But the barebones writing, the essential mechanical prose, certain phrases she would use, certain descriptions that were so awesomely vivid... the writing really was sublime. She often starts sentences with 'and', seemingly incongruously, but it gives a sense of continuance and musicality that I really ended up liking.
I would have swallowed her whole if it meant I could take her with me.
I should note that getting the e-book really helped me start this again, continue it and ultimately finish it. It was just easier having the opportunity to search for names that might have only cropped up a few times before, or find the first time that a certain subject was brought up, or a certain place, and a lot of things that would have been more difficult with only the physical book. I really don't think this book would have lost anything if it had just been clearer on some of the details of the world-building. It would have been just as beautiful and complex. So I really cannot compliment it entirely for its style. But I still enjoyed it so much, in a way I don't even know how to explain. Do I recommend it? That depends on what kind of reader you are and how much patience you have. But this was really something special and I'm super glad that I read it.
Content warnings:
Spoiler
war, death, descriptions of tortureDasya, the next time you open your eyes—say yes.
disabledbookdragon's review
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
sakeriver's review
The most obvious thing to say about this book is that it is beautiful, because it is. Reading it, I felt lost in the beauty of Samatar’s sentences, sometimes so much so that I lost sight of the story for the language in which it was told. And yet, by the end, I was there. And captivated.
mlore95's review
3.0
The Winged Histories is a difficult book to review. Much like A Stranger in Olondria, it's full of gorgeous, dense prose. Prose that can often be too dense, and often led to me losing interest and nodding off.Undeniably well-written, I feel this is a book that's easier to appreciate than it is to actually enjoy. It's full of myth, reflecting on the past, and stream of consciousness. Only rarely do we get traditional straightforward storytelling, and it leads to a plot that's hard to follow and doesn't grab attention. I appreciate this book, and Samatar's got some of the most beautiful writing in the genre, but this one really just didn't grab me like Stranger in Olondria did.
megatsunami's review
4.0
Gorgeous, personal, nuanced exploration of gender, spirituality, and revolution. (And this book is nothing like whatever probably came to your mind when I said that.) Would give 5 stars except that it took me like 100 pages to really get into the rhythm of the book. Sofia Samatar is extremely original and poetic but it takes a little work.
samiha_b's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
batesbarb's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
This is an absolutely beautiful book. Samatar's skill with words honestly feels a little unfair. The prose is lush and enveloping, but I found it difficult to connect to the story itself. It's been 5 years or more since I read A Stranger in Olondria, and I had a terrible time trying to keep track of the various nations and factions and how they related to each other. I kept forgetting who was fighting who and who was fomenting rebellion where. Perhaps if I had read Stranger more recently, I would have felt less lost.
The rotating narrator construction really allowed Samatar to show her skill at voice and tone (the sections have beautifully distinct tones and focuses, so that even the ostensibly third-person sections have a very clear source and it is obvious they are centered around different women), but it undercut what momentum the story built. As soon as I felt like I had even a basic grasp on the structure of the world and the people in it, the story would move to a different woman, and I'd have to start all over again figuring out who anyone was and how they related to each other. The first two viewpoint characters were the most distant and least connected, which I think amplified the problem for me.
All in all, my feelings about the book are quite muddled. I kept moving back and forth between being absorbed and enticed by the beautiful prose, and frustrated and alienated because I couldn't keep track of or connect to the actual people and events of the story.
The rotating narrator construction really allowed Samatar to show her skill at voice and tone (the sections have beautifully distinct tones and focuses, so that even the ostensibly third-person sections have a very clear source and it is obvious they are centered around different women), but it undercut what momentum the story built. As soon as I felt like I had even a basic grasp on the structure of the world and the people in it, the story would move to a different woman, and I'd have to start all over again figuring out who anyone was and how they related to each other. The first two viewpoint characters were the most distant and least connected, which I think amplified the problem for me.
All in all, my feelings about the book are quite muddled. I kept moving back and forth between being absorbed and enticed by the beautiful prose, and frustrated and alienated because I couldn't keep track of or connect to the actual people and events of the story.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death and Religious bigotry
Moderate: Emotional abuse and Colonisation
charlotekerstenauthor's review
"Your body remembers war. This body I love. War has shaped the beloved body."
So What's It About?
Civil war has come to Olondria. In The Winged Histories we see what this war means to four women, drastically different yet alike in that their lives are shaken to the core by the chaos in their land. Tav dreams of being a swordmaiden, and she is one of the first to whisper of rebellion. Tialon reflects on a life wasted by the oppressive restrictions of her father's religion. Seren sings of her love for Tav and the cycles of life that she sees unfold all around her, and Siski learns to face what she left behind after a life of empty frivolity.
What I Thought- The F Word
If I hadn't been entirely convinced by the end of A Stranger in Olondria, I would now be entirely positive: Sofia Samatar has won my heart for life. In short, this is a beautiful, stunningly-written little marvel of a book, strange and sorrowful and full of heart-aching loveliness. I'm sure I can't say anything about Samatar's prose that hasn't been said more eloquently by someone else, but I've never read anyone who writes quite as deliberately yet fearlessly, in a way that is at once finely-tuned and effortlessly graceful.
This is a book about war and its nation-spanning consequences and ugliness. It speaks to the cycles of oppression and rebellion that are doomed to repeat again and again, belief and tradition and fear. At its heart I think it is more than anything a story of women's resistance, and the many diverse, complex forms that this female resistance may take.
Tav's resistance is expressed when she runs away to become a swordmaiden, and again when she helps incite the Kestenyan rebellion against Olondria. It is perhaps the most literal form of resistance, but Samatar would not be satisfied with her readers calling Tav a hero and moving along to the next story. We see the ugly, horrible repercussions of her actions - both for herself in the form of PTSD and slow healing from her suffering as a soldier and for the nation as a whole in the damage that is wrought by the conflict. It's a wonderfully nuanced undoing of the fighter girl trope, where strength is equated with a woman's ability to engage in traditionally masculine forms of violence.
"It was the beginning of the dance of the mountains."
Tialon's resistance comes in the tiniest and strangest forms as she lives a tiny and overwhelmingly restrictive life under the dark, repressive influence of her father's obsessive religion. The atmosphere of stillness, boredom and repression is absolutely stifling in this portion of the book, and we see the way that zealous devotion to religion stripped Tialon's father of all his joy in life, kindness and affection for others. Tialon was a character in A Stranger in Olondria, and her aid to Jevick is revealed as one of the only things she considers being meaningful in the entirety of her life.
"The priest’s daughter read about the life that was going on in the palace. She drew pictures under the beam of her single candle, pictures of ladies and gentlemen walking and dancing and sitting down to meals at elegant tables. She knew all the styles of dress, how bodices changed from year to year, the fashions of hairpins, and whether the gentlemen were wearing their hair short or long, and sometimes she drew herself in the midst of the dancers, in a light carmine frock with a necklace of tourmalines and Evmeni pearls. She read the geographers, Elathuid the Voyager, Firdred of Bain, and she drew herself aboard ships, in hotels, in tents, on the pinnacles of mountains, and then sometimes in cities, in little parlors, among cousins, in the garden of an aunt who passed her an ice decorated with pink dust. She had to imagine the colors, as she possessed only charcoal. She drew in a frenzy of self-loathing and a sick, irresistible craving. Sometimes she made herself eat the charcoal as a sort of penance and vomited ecstatically over the balcony. At dawn the sky was so clear and almost green. And she felt bright and light. She always burned the drawings before she left her room. "
Seren's resistance comes in the form of her insistence upon the necessity of "new songs." Living with her nomadic people and learning to spread ideas through song, she sees the way that her people are limited by their notions of gender and sexuality. One of the most interesting parts of the book was the treatment of lesbianism by Seren's people: they see it as something that is acceptable in little children, but any women who continues to love women into adulthood simply need to grow up. Ultimately, this belittlement and judgment leads Seren and Tav to strike off on their own into the wilderness, and leads to Seren's conclusion that there need to be new songs.
"The men are going to war and the women are spinning. The women are spinning and the men are going to war. The men are going to war for the women. The women are singing the men to war. The men’s hearts grow hot and sharp as blades from the singing of the women. The women are memory. They are the memory of men, of those who have died. The men sing of the fallen and the women keep their songs and memories alive. The women spin threads that never break. The women are spinning shrouds. All the men and women are singing themselves to death."
Siski's resistance comes in the form of her survival through the war and its aftermath, having lost all the trappings of her frivolous life as a socialite. There are so many fascinating components of Siski's story - from the misery of her and Tav's childhood home due to her father's rapidly-changing moods to the strange, horrible supernatural truth that she turns her back on when she is a teenager. Ultimately, her story is one of running and running from that horror and trying to lose herself in the pleasures of life, but ultimately being unable to keep running from her heart and what she owes to the man she loves.
"By all the gods, had you turned into a dragon in front of me, I would have perished in fire before I ran away."
So What's It About?
Civil war has come to Olondria. In The Winged Histories we see what this war means to four women, drastically different yet alike in that their lives are shaken to the core by the chaos in their land. Tav dreams of being a swordmaiden, and she is one of the first to whisper of rebellion. Tialon reflects on a life wasted by the oppressive restrictions of her father's religion. Seren sings of her love for Tav and the cycles of life that she sees unfold all around her, and Siski learns to face what she left behind after a life of empty frivolity.
What I Thought- The F Word
If I hadn't been entirely convinced by the end of A Stranger in Olondria, I would now be entirely positive: Sofia Samatar has won my heart for life. In short, this is a beautiful, stunningly-written little marvel of a book, strange and sorrowful and full of heart-aching loveliness. I'm sure I can't say anything about Samatar's prose that hasn't been said more eloquently by someone else, but I've never read anyone who writes quite as deliberately yet fearlessly, in a way that is at once finely-tuned and effortlessly graceful.
This is a book about war and its nation-spanning consequences and ugliness. It speaks to the cycles of oppression and rebellion that are doomed to repeat again and again, belief and tradition and fear. At its heart I think it is more than anything a story of women's resistance, and the many diverse, complex forms that this female resistance may take.
Tav's resistance is expressed when she runs away to become a swordmaiden, and again when she helps incite the Kestenyan rebellion against Olondria. It is perhaps the most literal form of resistance, but Samatar would not be satisfied with her readers calling Tav a hero and moving along to the next story. We see the ugly, horrible repercussions of her actions - both for herself in the form of PTSD and slow healing from her suffering as a soldier and for the nation as a whole in the damage that is wrought by the conflict. It's a wonderfully nuanced undoing of the fighter girl trope, where strength is equated with a woman's ability to engage in traditionally masculine forms of violence.
"It was the beginning of the dance of the mountains."
Tialon's resistance comes in the tiniest and strangest forms as she lives a tiny and overwhelmingly restrictive life under the dark, repressive influence of her father's obsessive religion. The atmosphere of stillness, boredom and repression is absolutely stifling in this portion of the book, and we see the way that zealous devotion to religion stripped Tialon's father of all his joy in life, kindness and affection for others. Tialon was a character in A Stranger in Olondria, and her aid to Jevick is revealed as one of the only things she considers being meaningful in the entirety of her life.
"The priest’s daughter read about the life that was going on in the palace. She drew pictures under the beam of her single candle, pictures of ladies and gentlemen walking and dancing and sitting down to meals at elegant tables. She knew all the styles of dress, how bodices changed from year to year, the fashions of hairpins, and whether the gentlemen were wearing their hair short or long, and sometimes she drew herself in the midst of the dancers, in a light carmine frock with a necklace of tourmalines and Evmeni pearls. She read the geographers, Elathuid the Voyager, Firdred of Bain, and she drew herself aboard ships, in hotels, in tents, on the pinnacles of mountains, and then sometimes in cities, in little parlors, among cousins, in the garden of an aunt who passed her an ice decorated with pink dust. She had to imagine the colors, as she possessed only charcoal. She drew in a frenzy of self-loathing and a sick, irresistible craving. Sometimes she made herself eat the charcoal as a sort of penance and vomited ecstatically over the balcony. At dawn the sky was so clear and almost green. And she felt bright and light. She always burned the drawings before she left her room. "
Seren's resistance comes in the form of her insistence upon the necessity of "new songs." Living with her nomadic people and learning to spread ideas through song, she sees the way that her people are limited by their notions of gender and sexuality. One of the most interesting parts of the book was the treatment of lesbianism by Seren's people: they see it as something that is acceptable in little children, but any women who continues to love women into adulthood simply need to grow up. Ultimately, this belittlement and judgment leads Seren and Tav to strike off on their own into the wilderness, and leads to Seren's conclusion that there need to be new songs.
"The men are going to war and the women are spinning. The women are spinning and the men are going to war. The men are going to war for the women. The women are singing the men to war. The men’s hearts grow hot and sharp as blades from the singing of the women. The women are memory. They are the memory of men, of those who have died. The men sing of the fallen and the women keep their songs and memories alive. The women spin threads that never break. The women are spinning shrouds. All the men and women are singing themselves to death."
Siski's resistance comes in the form of her survival through the war and its aftermath, having lost all the trappings of her frivolous life as a socialite. There are so many fascinating components of Siski's story - from the misery of her and Tav's childhood home due to her father's rapidly-changing moods to the strange, horrible supernatural truth that she turns her back on when she is a teenager. Ultimately, her story is one of running and running from that horror and trying to lose herself in the pleasures of life, but ultimately being unable to keep running from her heart and what she owes to the man she loves.
"By all the gods, had you turned into a dragon in front of me, I would have perished in fire before I ran away."