Scan barcode
giannaba's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
jazminrose's review against another edition
5.0
I originally tried to read this book when I was around eight years old. It was recommended to me by a well-meaning adult who had never read it but saw a fantasy book with a seven year old protagonist. I don’t remember much other than the basic premise and that I found the writing dry and hard to get into. I didn’t finish it.
As an adult, I’d heard about it in passing several times and thought, “Oh yeah, that book.” In early 2023, it came recommended to me again, this time compared to His Dark Materials. As a serious and longtime HDM fan, my interest was piqued. Some light digging revealed that it’s somewhat of a YA book and I considered that my lack of interest the first time around might have been due to my age and not the book itself. I decided to give it another go.
Immediately, I was drawn in by the narrative structure. The combination of ‘true’ story, folklore, and anthropological review is excellent. This set-up allows for many an observation on how the passage of time skews history and the implications of unconscious bias in research (in this case, an all-women society studied through the lens of a patriarchal society).
As the story progressed, I was also deeply fascinated by the world-building. The dark sisters were a delicious concept to unravel. Culture and religion in the Hames is fully realized, and intriguing at that. Be prepared to find yourself completely immersed in Alta’s universe.
Highly recommend to fans of fantasy. My favourite book of 2023 so far.
As an adult, I’d heard about it in passing several times and thought, “Oh yeah, that book.” In early 2023, it came recommended to me again, this time compared to His Dark Materials. As a serious and longtime HDM fan, my interest was piqued. Some light digging revealed that it’s somewhat of a YA book and I considered that my lack of interest the first time around might have been due to my age and not the book itself. I decided to give it another go.
Immediately, I was drawn in by the narrative structure. The combination of ‘true’ story, folklore, and anthropological review is excellent. This set-up allows for many an observation on how the passage of time skews history and the implications of unconscious bias in research (in this case, an all-women society studied through the lens of a patriarchal society).
As the story progressed, I was also deeply fascinated by the world-building. The dark sisters were a delicious concept to unravel. Culture and religion in the Hames is fully realized, and intriguing at that. Be prepared to find yourself completely immersed in Alta’s universe.
Highly recommend to fans of fantasy. My favourite book of 2023 so far.
micahhortonhallett's review against another edition
4.0
Thank you HumbleBundle and your Women of SF bundle. This is the second author I have read from that particular collection that has been publishing for mulitple decades, with a slew of awards across multiple genres that I have never heard of. This is also number six in my ever growing list of female oriented YA fiction that is objectively better than the Hunger Games or Twilight. Given that none so far have fallen below that bar, I may have to set a new benchmark.
thecatconstellation's review against another edition
Reading too many other things; will revisit later
garnetofeden's review against another edition
4.0
I first read this book many years ago, but my local library did not have the sequel. I never forgot about it though because I thought the concept was so cool! I reread this book because it had been such a long time, but I am really looking forward to finally knowing what happens. Now that I'm older and more analytical, I must say I really like the style of this book. It isn't just a story, but also includes ballads and songs (with actual music in the back!) as well as historical analyses from the 'future' of that universe written in an authentic academic style.
Last finished 5/18/2011. Rating reviewed 7/7/2023.
Last finished 5/18/2011. Rating reviewed 7/7/2023.
imyra's review against another edition
2.0
Gostaria muito de ter gostado desse livro. Quando eu li a sinopse, fiquei bem interessada!
Nossa heroína, Jenna, é uma orfã que foi adotada por uma vila apenas de mulheres, seguidoras da deusa Alta. Nessa vila, cada mulher tem seu papel e quando chega a uma certa idade, cada garota escolhe qual papel vai cumprir na vila: guerreira, sacerdotisa, cozinheira, cuidadora das crianças, etc. Além disso, elas também vão chamar sua "irmã negra", no caso, uma outra parte dela, que aparece apenas sob a luz do luar ou sob a luz de velas. Jenna é especial por que por algumas razões ela pode ser a garota da lenda, a que vai trazer o fim e o começo para todas dessa comunidade.
Infelizmente, o livro não cumpriu as expectativas que eu tive dele. A autora realmente escreve bem e eu gostei de vários personagens, inclusive a sacerdotisa da deusa. Só que a história acaba de forma bem abrupta. O livro é bem pequeno e eu só descobri que ele era de uma série depois que eu comecei a ler (e fui colocar no goodreads). Comentários do outro volume também reclamam do tamanho e comentam ambos os livros deveriam ter sido colocados em um volume só. Eu, devo dizer que concordo. Não importando muito o tamanho do segundo volume, o primeiro é bem pequeno mesmo.
Demorei para ler o livro por outro motivo, que tem relação com o fato de ter dado apenas 2 estrelas para ele: o worldbuilding.
Ela faz um mundo interessante, fantástico, mas o que não funcionou comigo foi como esse mundo foi colocado para o leitor. Cada capítulo é dividido em partes como história, profecia, música etc., e isso fez com que a leitura não fosse bem fluída. Apesar dessas partes enriquecerem o mundo de Jenna, também deixavam os acontecimentos mais distantes. Se essas partes fossem pequenas (como por exemplo, no pêndulo de foucault, que tem um balanço fenomenal de tudo isso), talvez eu tivesse gostado mais. Ou se essas partes fossem melhor intercaladas na história. Do jeito que estava, eu terminava o capítulo (principalmente mais para o final do livro), dava um enorme suspiro e eu parava de ler ou me resignava a passar essa parte mais rápido...
Nossa heroína, Jenna, é uma orfã que foi adotada por uma vila apenas de mulheres, seguidoras da deusa Alta. Nessa vila, cada mulher tem seu papel e quando chega a uma certa idade, cada garota escolhe qual papel vai cumprir na vila: guerreira, sacerdotisa, cozinheira, cuidadora das crianças, etc. Além disso, elas também vão chamar sua "irmã negra", no caso, uma outra parte dela, que aparece apenas sob a luz do luar ou sob a luz de velas. Jenna é especial por que por algumas razões ela pode ser a garota da lenda, a que vai trazer o fim e o começo para todas dessa comunidade.
Infelizmente, o livro não cumpriu as expectativas que eu tive dele. A autora realmente escreve bem e eu gostei de vários personagens, inclusive a sacerdotisa da deusa. Só que a história acaba de forma bem abrupta. O livro é bem pequeno e eu só descobri que ele era de uma série depois que eu comecei a ler (e fui colocar no goodreads). Comentários do outro volume também reclamam do tamanho e comentam ambos os livros deveriam ter sido colocados em um volume só. Eu, devo dizer que concordo. Não importando muito o tamanho do segundo volume, o primeiro é bem pequeno mesmo.
Demorei para ler o livro por outro motivo, que tem relação com o fato de ter dado apenas 2 estrelas para ele: o worldbuilding.
Ela faz um mundo interessante, fantástico, mas o que não funcionou comigo foi como esse mundo foi colocado para o leitor. Cada capítulo é dividido em partes como história, profecia, música etc., e isso fez com que a leitura não fosse bem fluída. Apesar dessas partes enriquecerem o mundo de Jenna, também deixavam os acontecimentos mais distantes. Se essas partes fossem pequenas (como por exemplo, no pêndulo de foucault, que tem um balanço fenomenal de tudo isso), talvez eu tivesse gostado mais. Ou se essas partes fossem melhor intercaladas na história. Do jeito que estava, eu terminava o capítulo (principalmente mais para o final do livro), dava um enorme suspiro e eu parava de ler ou me resignava a passar essa parte mais rápido...
charlotekerstenauthor's review against another edition
“A child is not yours to own but yours to raise. She may not be what you will have her be, but she will be what she has to be. Remember what they say, that Wood may remain twenty years in the water, but it is still not a fish.”
Spoilers follow, and I’ll be spending some time discussing pedophilia.
So What’s It About?
Jenna lives in a remote mountainside hame with the followers of Alta, an elite group of all-women warriors and scholars who live in solitude with their dark sisters, soulmate counterparts summoned awake to live with them when they come of age. Jenna, however, is restless and full of questions, and it soon becomes clear that she may be all that stands between the followers of Alta and their doom as the world of men becomes restless.
What I Thought
In my mind, this book’s principle strength is its utterly unique world-building. The idea of the dark sisters -magical soulmates that mysteriously awaken into being once the followers of Alta access their magic – is unlike anything I’ve read before, and it brings with it the potential for some fascinating explorations of sisterhood and duality:
“THE MYTH: Then Great Alta plaited the left side of her hair, the golden side, and let it fall into the sinkhole of night. And there she drew up the queen of shadows and set her upon the earth. Next she plaited the right side of her hair, the dark side, and with it she caught the queen of light. And she set her next to the black queen. “And you two shall be sisters,” quoth Great Alta. “You shall be as images in a glass, the one reflecting the other. As I have bound you in my hair, so it shall be.” Then she twined her living braids around and about them and they were as one. “
However, the unfortunate thing is that Jenna’s own sister only appears towards the very end of the book, so the most fascinating part of the book plays a much less prominent role than I would have hoped.
The second thing that I enjoyed about this book is the historical framing device. Each section of the main narrative is framed by pseudo-academic essays from a variety of perspectives, which also include pieces of song, myth and poetry. It’s really interesting to see the way that the ongoing story is forgotten, distorted, reclaimed and interpreted in different ways by fictional historians and academics.
On paper, the third big draw of this book is the empowerment of the all-female society that lives in progressive, peaceful unity. The sisters of Great Alta are self-sustaining and isolationist, and I imagine that this book would be something of a dream to a feminist separationist. I can appreciate world-building that centers around female independence and empowerment, but I don’t necessarily agree with feminist separationism and the kind of defeatist misandry that I feel underlies it. As someone who mainly subscribes to intersectional feminism more than anything else, I also think it’s a massive oversimplification to argue that the solution to complex intersections of oppression could ever be to simply to separate women from men. It belies the ways that women perpetuate other forms of oppression and creates a false essentialist dichotomy.
It also doesn’t help that there were was one particularly reprehensible scene that felt so gross to me that it soured my entire perspective on the followers of Alta and the book as a whole. Jenna meets up with a runaway prince, and they become friends and travel together. They are both late tweens to early teens at this point, but the ADULT WOMEN of the hame they visit immediately start fawning over him, making suggestive comments and if I remember correctly one of them propositions him. As one of them says:
“There are several in the Hame who like bull calves.”
:/
It’s also unfortunate that there is a certain amount of queerbaiting in the relationship between Jenna and her best friend Pynt. At a certain point it switches over from queerbaiting to plain old unrequited love as it becomes apparent that Pynt loves her and becomes very jealous and possessive at the dawning of the tepid, tepid romance between Jenna and Runaway Prince. There’s also this gem:
“There is one homeoerotic song, a rather wistful melody, about her best friend, Margaret [Pynt’s actual name], dying of love for her as the Anna strides off into battle once again.”
Spoilers follow, and I’ll be spending some time discussing pedophilia.
So What’s It About?
Jenna lives in a remote mountainside hame with the followers of Alta, an elite group of all-women warriors and scholars who live in solitude with their dark sisters, soulmate counterparts summoned awake to live with them when they come of age. Jenna, however, is restless and full of questions, and it soon becomes clear that she may be all that stands between the followers of Alta and their doom as the world of men becomes restless.
What I Thought
In my mind, this book’s principle strength is its utterly unique world-building. The idea of the dark sisters -magical soulmates that mysteriously awaken into being once the followers of Alta access their magic – is unlike anything I’ve read before, and it brings with it the potential for some fascinating explorations of sisterhood and duality:
“THE MYTH: Then Great Alta plaited the left side of her hair, the golden side, and let it fall into the sinkhole of night. And there she drew up the queen of shadows and set her upon the earth. Next she plaited the right side of her hair, the dark side, and with it she caught the queen of light. And she set her next to the black queen. “And you two shall be sisters,” quoth Great Alta. “You shall be as images in a glass, the one reflecting the other. As I have bound you in my hair, so it shall be.” Then she twined her living braids around and about them and they were as one. “
However, the unfortunate thing is that Jenna’s own sister only appears towards the very end of the book, so the most fascinating part of the book plays a much less prominent role than I would have hoped.
The second thing that I enjoyed about this book is the historical framing device. Each section of the main narrative is framed by pseudo-academic essays from a variety of perspectives, which also include pieces of song, myth and poetry. It’s really interesting to see the way that the ongoing story is forgotten, distorted, reclaimed and interpreted in different ways by fictional historians and academics.
On paper, the third big draw of this book is the empowerment of the all-female society that lives in progressive, peaceful unity. The sisters of Great Alta are self-sustaining and isolationist, and I imagine that this book would be something of a dream to a feminist separationist. I can appreciate world-building that centers around female independence and empowerment, but I don’t necessarily agree with feminist separationism and the kind of defeatist misandry that I feel underlies it. As someone who mainly subscribes to intersectional feminism more than anything else, I also think it’s a massive oversimplification to argue that the solution to complex intersections of oppression could ever be to simply to separate women from men. It belies the ways that women perpetuate other forms of oppression and creates a false essentialist dichotomy.
It also doesn’t help that there were was one particularly reprehensible scene that felt so gross to me that it soured my entire perspective on the followers of Alta and the book as a whole. Jenna meets up with a runaway prince, and they become friends and travel together. They are both late tweens to early teens at this point, but the ADULT WOMEN of the hame they visit immediately start fawning over him, making suggestive comments and if I remember correctly one of them propositions him. As one of them says:
“There are several in the Hame who like bull calves.”
:/
It’s also unfortunate that there is a certain amount of queerbaiting in the relationship between Jenna and her best friend Pynt. At a certain point it switches over from queerbaiting to plain old unrequited love as it becomes apparent that Pynt loves her and becomes very jealous and possessive at the dawning of the tepid, tepid romance between Jenna and Runaway Prince. There’s also this gem:
“There is one homeoerotic song, a rather wistful melody, about her best friend, Margaret [Pynt’s actual name], dying of love for her as the Anna strides off into battle once again.”
torquenator's review against another edition
4.0
I enjoyed this, I liked the back and forth of the imperfect history at the lead of each chapter and the "truth" of the story after. Two small gripes about character behavior realism. The behavior of her third foster mother seamed a little random and out of the blue. The attraction between Jenna and Carum as being a little to instant and unrealistic. These were only small issues though.
composed's review against another edition
I can't decide what rating to give it so I'll just write a review instead. It was a slow start for me and the language of the "current" time was really over the top sometimes. The historian interludes grew on me, especially as it became clear what they were implying. Definitely some cool elements, and there were a few times when I thought "Ooh, I'd like to read this book specifically right now," but for the most part I don't think I'll continue the series.
lauralauralaura's review against another edition
3.0
This series felt like an allegory without actually quite finding its way all the way to being one. Set in a world in the midst of a war between cultures that is kind of also a war between genders, with lots of mystical mysteriousness. Features the common (and not my favorite) trope in sci fi/fantasy of someone from the future arguing about the time span actually featured in the book.