bluejayreads's reviews
849 reviews

4.0

3.0

This book was recommended to me, and I generally attempt to read books recommended to me. This wasn’t my first foray into this author’s work, either. I’d read his book Recursion a while back and found it a sci-fi kind of weird that isn’t necessarily my jam, but that was well-written and had some interesting ideas. So I figured this probably wouldn’t be bad.

And I was correct. Upgrade wasn’t bad. The protagonist may not have had very many interesting characteristics beyond being the protagonist, but the concept was interesting and Blake Crouch is a competent writer. The action moved along, the story was largely well-paced, and it kept me engaged the whole way through. Nothing spectacular, sure, but perfectly readable.

However. As you might have guessed by the tone here, I do have some criticisms. Again, Blake’s particular brand of sci-fi weird isn’t quite up my alley, so some of this could definitely be me. But some of it is I just take issue with some of the fundamental concepts of the book itself.

Upgrade is ambitious in scope and interesting in concept. In a world where genetic modification is very possible (but also very illegal), an anti-gene-modification enforcement agent finds his genes being modified against his will, making him almost superhuman. Now he has to tackle questions like “why did this happen?” and “would the world be better if it happened to everybody?” But as interesting and potentially thematic as this idea could be, the execution is a little wacky. Some parts are frighteningly realistic, others are laughably not, and the discordant combination made the whole thing feel a bit silly. It would have made a perfectly serviceable mindless action movie, but the attempt at thematic depth just emphasized how ridiculous some parts of it were.

I spent a lot of time trying to put my finger on my actual problem with this book. I had notes about how Logan Ramsey has big “r/iamverysmart” vibes, and whether or not killing the same character twice was too much, and how cruel Logan’s mother was and how I couldn’t believe that neither of her children realized how much they were like her. But then I was reminded of the word “eugenics” and realized my issue. Without giving away too many spoilers, the arguable antagonist of the first half of the book thinks climate change would be solved if people were only better in a specific way and wants to accomplish that with mass gene modification. It really feels like what a eugenics movement would look like in a world where you didn’t necessarily have to breed better traits into people because you could just modify people’s genes instead. But our protagonist seemed pretty against that whole idea, so I wasn’t too bothered. Up until the end, when (minor spoiler alert) he decided his problem wasn’t so much the eugenics-style idea, just which traits should be changed. It left a really bad taste in my mouth.

It’s very possible that at least some of my complaints are because while I find these kinds of stories fine, they’re not the type of thing I generally really love. And on the whole, Upgrade was fine. I didn’t love it, I think its themes were handled poorly, and I really didn’t love some of the vibes it gives off. But it was readable. I found it interesting enough to finish. If it were made into an action movie, I think it would work pretty well. I just don’t particularly recommend it as it is.

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Sun of Blood and Ruin by Mariely Lares

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 8%.

Second book in a row with a fantastic historical setting but the writing just didn't do it justice. (I keep wanting to give historical novels a chance, but they're sure not making it easy.) I'm not against a good in media res but this story throws our protagonist into "hero of the people" scenarios without ever establishing that the people care about her, or even know about her. The writing was simplistic, the characters were bland and felt more like cutouts wafting through an admittedly interesting plot than real people with emotions and desires and flaws. For a supposedly anti-colonialism story, the protagonist has a lot of positive words for her colonial-ruler father and so far nothing but criticism for the Indigenous resistance movement. She seems to be doing Zorro-style, Mesoamerican-superhero kind of things without any real motivation to do so - it's cool, to be sure, but I never get the sense that she has any reasoning to do so. And it seems an awful lot of harm to put oneself in the way of without having some very clear reason, either emotional or moral, to go to all the trouble. Which is disappointing because the world is interesting and South/Central America is woefully underutilized as a fantasy setting, especially when history provides so many rich opportunities for mythologies and/or historical events to integrate into the narrative. Unfortunately, it ends up being very much like Neferura - a great idea with mediocre execution.

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Neferura by Malayna Evans

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 23%.

My first DNF book of 2024, and it has nothing to do with the book's subject. I'm a huge Ancient Egypt fan and I loved the idea of a story focused on women's power and featuring the daughter of one of the very few female pharaohs. But it really failed in execution. Malayna has clearly done her research and knows a lot about the history and the time period. But it feels anachronistic in a way that's really hard to place. I think it has something to do with the characters, who feel like a variety of modern people who just happen to live in a world that looks like Ancient Egypt. Modern values and opinions seem plastered over the trappings of the time period. Though it's definitely not a YA book, stylistically it seems closer to something written for the younger teens. It also feels unpolished, like either the writer is either fairly young or this is one of their earliest forays into fiction. The characters are unremarkable and don't seem to have any real goals or desires. Supposedly they have relationships to each other, but there's never a sense that our titular protagonist actually cares about any of them. I think Neferura's emotions were the most confusing thing about her, because they never seemed to fit what a normal person would feel. Simple, inane things leave her struggling not to cry from sheer frustration; her mother's casual cruelty doesn't seem to even register. I feel like a real pharaoh's daughter would not make it to adulthood being as naïve and gullible as she is - she'd either get wise or be chewed up by the allegedly-ruthless court. And don't even get me started on the body-shaming and fat-shaming in this book. The very first line is Neferura getting body-shamed by her mother. In the first twenty-four pages, she is fat-shamed by her mother twice, by her own narration three or four times, and she fat-shames her mother once. It's excessive and entirely unnecessary to anything in the story. So on the whole, while I think the concept is interesting and I would definitely be open to a book exploring Ancient Egypt with Nefertiti's daughter, this book does not do that idea justice.

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Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

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5.0

I am not generally into books about time travel shenanigans. Not because I have anything against time travel in particular, but it just seems to be rare to have it done well, or at least in a way that I find enjoyable to read about. But, as usual, Sir Terry pulled it off.

I think a lot of that has to do with the character of Commander Samuel Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Due to some unfortunate wrong-place, wrong-time magical happenstance, Vimes ends up in his own past – the Ankh-Morpork of many decades ago, when he had just joined the Watch and things were, objectively, much worse than they are now. But one of the things that I appreciate most about Commander Vimes is that he is a relentlessly practical man. I recognize a kindred spirit in that, but it also means that the situation may be weird and fairly unpleasant, but he gets right on with dealing with it, with very little pining or philosophizing and absolutely no dithering or worrying about paradoxes.

That’s not to say that he’s emotionless, though. In fact, what makes Vimes so stellar as a character to me throughout this whole series is that he is competent, practical, and stays focused on the problem(s) in front of him instead of wasting time with excessive introspection or philosophizing, but he also has a strong set of personal values, cares deeply for the people around him, and feels his emotions intensely. He doesn’t do the introspection on the page because he doesn’t need to; he already knows himself thoroughly and is in control. To use the cliché, he is in touch with his feelings, but though they may tempt him to act against his values, they never control him. In so many ways, he is a paragon of positive masculinity – competent, principled, practical, honorable, caring, willing and able to experience great depth of feeling, never letting his feelings overrule him. He’s the rare character who is great to read about as a character, and also someone I think I would like, or at least respect, in real life.

Apparently this is the Sam Vimes Appreciation Review. That does make sense, because he really is the star of this book. Sure, there’s the whole time travel thing. There’s the murderer he’s tracking who also got zapped into the past and has the same future knowledge that Vimes does. There’s the fact that this point in the past is a particularly sticky one for Ankh-Morpork. There’s the sheer delight of a character being spectacularly good at what they do (some of it because Vimes has future knowledge, but much of it because he’s just a really, really good watchman). All of that is quite enjoyable to read. But this is a book that pushes Commander Vimes to his limits, and that means that he, as a character, is really what carries this story.

The Discworld series doesn’t generally shy away from getting dark in places. But this book is probably the darkest that I’ve read so far, and since the City Watch sub-series tends to be less funny in general, it’s not tempered with humor into something darkly funny. It’s just dark. Not at all in a bad way, to be sure. As I said, these events push Vimes to his limit, and it’s hard to do that without delving into some darkness. But even in terms of sheer numbers of deaths and injuries, this has got to be one of the more violent Discworld books. It’s not unnecessary violence when it comes to the plot, but it definitely goes (and takes Commander Vimes to) some very dark places.

I can’t necessarily say that Night Watch has replaced Interesting Times as my favorite Discworld book. The two are so different in mood, tone, theme, and content that it’s hard to do a direct comparison. But I can definitely say that Night Watch is among my favorite Discword books. If you like Commander Vimes as a character, love stories where protagonists are pushed to their limits, or just enjoy the very specific trope where a character is sent back in time and has to relive a difficult part of their life from a new perspective, I think you’ll agree.

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Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell

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3.0

I keep forgetting that Jenny Odell writes works of philosophy, not how-to books - although to be fair, her titles are incredibly misleading on that point. I read and enjoyed her book How to Do Nothing, but was mildly disappointed to find that it wasn't actually about "how to" anything. I don't know why I expected anything different from her second book, but I did in fact have the ridiculous expectation that this book might tell me something about discovering a life beyond the clock. Instead, just like with How to Do Nothing, I got only philosophy, in this case philosophy of time. Admittedly, quite a bit of it was interesting. The section discussing how our modern concept of time came to be what it is was quite fascinating. But much of it is about how other cultures conceptualize time differently, how nature's time scales are different than the ones we humans created during the Industrial Revolution, and mostly about how much climate change is destroying everything. It was something I noticed in How to Do Nothing too, but it's much stronger here. I hesitate to call it "climate despair," but Jenny's writing is clearly and overwhelmingly influenced by fear and grief over the climate crisis. This in itself isn't necessarily bad. What I struggled with most was actually connecting anything this book said to, well, anything. It could very well be nothing to do with the book and just be about me, but so much of this felt difficult to grasp, and whatever I did grasp felt abstract. There was a lot of information here, but it didn't feel like a coherent narrative so much as an acquaintance handing me a box full of papers, each one containing a variety of facts and opinions about time. My reaction to that scenario would probably be the same as my reaction to this book: "Great, thanks! But what am I supposed to do with this?" And that's a question that Saving Time never really answers.

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Liftoff: Couch to Barbell by Casey Johnston

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5.0

This is a rare book that does exactly what it says on the tin - it will take you from couch (don't know what you're doing with weights) to barbell (can lift a barbell, have enough knowledge to do so without hurting yourself). It's straightforward, no frills and no fancy layouts and not even any pictures (though it does come with a spreadsheet full of video links) and has the general vibe of a self-published book in the most positive way possible - it doesn't have a publisher insisting on a certain page count or a specific narrative voice, so it skips all that and goes straight to providing practical, useful information. It also spends a lot, arguably more, time on the stuff you do outside of the gym to support your weightlifting journey - mainly eating and resting. I understand the logic with that, though, because for those of us who are aware of modern exercise culture (read: all of us), the idea of resting, not working out all the time, and eating more to fuel growing muscles are the parts we're probably going to struggle with more than the actual "go to the gym and lift heavy stuff" part. And as someone with a history of eating disorders, I found the whole idea suspiciously easy. You're telling me I can lift some weights for around half an hour three times a week, eat half again as much as I have been eating, and still see health and strength (if not necessarily weight or size) results? Sounds fake. But also I'm five weeks into this program as of writing this review and it seems to be working so far. Turns out for me, lifting heavy stuff is infinitely more enjoyable than anything cardio-related. And though I've been in recovery from my eating disorder since 2017, doing this program has made it feel possible to be recovered. Take that with a grain of salt because it's just one person's perspective, but I've found it incredible.

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How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

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4.25

A very strange book. It's basically a series of short stories combined into one volume, but the characters are all connected in some ways and taken together they tell the story of how life on Earth was decimated by a plague and climate change and what people did afterwards. The final connections and the overarching narrative of the story doesn't become clear until the last chapter/story, which pulls everything together. It's also an exercise in memory, because the whole thing fits together like an intricate puzzle and if you aren't able to remember details you're going to miss a lot of the connections. It's an emotionally heavy story of an uncomfortably possible apocalypse and it made me tear up quite a few times, but also didn't quite have the emotional impact I think it could have had because I was so busy trying to keep track of how all the different stories fit together and place them in the timeline and the overarching narrative. However, I have a notably terrible memory, so that may be less of a problem for other people. It's unusual and clever, an interesting story told in a unique way, and worth the read if you like apocalypses with a sci-fi edge or if you just want a book unlike anything you've read before.

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Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang

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3.0

I’m always down for media skewering the beauty industry. The damage the pursuit of beauty does to to the body and the psyche, consumerism masquerading as self-care, a mantra of “wellness” that only adds more work and stress to your life while claiming if you just did it right you’d never have a negative emotion again … these are all ideas that I find fascinating and compelling and I love to explore.

Unfortunately, that’s not really what I got with Natural Beauty.

Don’t get me wrong, it tries! It absolutely tries really hard to say a lot of things. But I think the problem was that it was try to cover way too many things in a book that isn’t nearly long enough. In addition to the commentary on the beauty industry, it also tries to talk about the value of music, beauty as social capital, the nature of beauty itself (through both physical beauty and music), complex relationships with parents, the inherent power dynamics of money, possibly sustainability – and that’s just what I can remember off the top of my head.

One of the primary drivers of the book is a fascinating form of body horror serving as a counterpoint to Holistik’s beauty mandate, which was a wonderful idea and a form of body horror that I don’t see a lot, so I appreciated it both as a body horror fan and a beauty culture skeptic. But for it to have been done well, it needed to be a slow burn. And Natural Beauty is emphatically not that. In fact, in the first two-thirds or so, the bit that should have been the tense, gradual build-up to the true horror at the end, the changes happen rapidly – and our unnamed protagonist barely seems to notice them anyway, simply commenting on how her body has changed and going on about her business. What seems to be the message of the book has to struggle for page time among flashbacks to the protagonist’s past, her thoughts about piano and music in general, and interactions with her coworkers.

Then about halfway through, the focus slowly begins to shift. In case you couldn’t figure it out from the back cover or the first few pages of the book, there’s something very weird and very suspicious going on at Holistik. The story shifts away from the protagonist’s body and the idea of beauty and towards finding out exactly what is happening at Holistik. But even that is unsatisfying because the answers we eventually get don’t actually tie up all the questions that I had. (What about the deer? What about the hand cream?) The book gets weird, and not in the unsetting way I enjoy, but in a way that feels overdone and unbelievable. I was halfway through reading a particular scene before I realized it was supposed to be the climax and not just another outlandish even in the series of outlandish events that was the last third of the book.

The narration is straightforward and passionless, which is not always a bad thing, but in this case served to keep at a distance any emotions that would have made it impactful. It also made it really difficult to judge which scenes were actually happening and which were some kind of drug-induced unreality sequence. And as I mentioned previously, the body horror aspect could have been fantastic if it was paced better. But what really made it so disappointing was the fact that it couldn’t keep a focus. It started off with the beauty industry and the costs and dangers of being beautiful. But it seems afraid to go too deep into it or lean too hard into the horrifying, revolting underbelly. Whenever it approached anything particularly grim, it would back off to talk about music or the protagonist’s parents or her past. Then it shifted to “let’s find out how fucked up this company really is!” with the bonus that the protagonist wasn’t even particularly interested in this line of investigating, but got dragged along as her friends started to pry. Then at the end it abruptly switches back to body horror and beauty culture, skipping over the actual change that would have made me actually feel something about it and relying on the protagonist’s passionless commentary and opinions about how just entirely not participating in beauty is good, actually.

I wanted this to be something more than it was. I wanted a literary horror commentary on the beauty industry, beauty culture, and how the modern mandate of “wellness” just sells women more work and more reasons to appeal to the male gaze while convincing them it’s actually “self-care” and “empowerment.” What I got was an admittedly well-written but poorly paced and unfocused story about a young woman who got caught up with a really fucked up beauty brand. The ideas were strong and the concepts had a lot of potential. But the execution, at least in my opinion, didn’t do them justice.

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Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones

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3.5

Very weird, very short, very disturbing. It had some strong magical realism elements, but since the narrator was the only person to experience anything weird, it didn't feel like magical realism so much as one of those books where you're not sure if there's actually something supernatural going on or if it's all in the protagonist's head. But the back cover also calls it "deeply rooted in the contemporary Native American experience," so maybe it's actually including a particular tribe's understanding of or mythology around ghosts and I'm just missing the context to understand. This whole novella gives me a feeling that I'm missing something. By itself, it's a disturbing, incredibly dark horror story that never quite answers the question of whether or not any of this actually happened. But I also get the sense that there's deeper ideas that I just don't have the context or the analysis stills to really grasp.

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bluejayreads's reviews 849 reviews

bluejayreads's reviews
849 reviews