bookaquarius's reviews
52 reviews

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

“I want my life—my death—to matter more than that.”

I read Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar and I’m having mixed feelings! “Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past….” I think it’s undoubtedly a great book. I didn’t love it but I liked it. It’s artistic, and dark, and sardonically funny, and gross, and confusing. It lost me a bit in the middle when I was struggling to overcome my judgement of Cyrus, but I was refreshed when I realized his supporting character, Zee, noticed it too. I went out of my comfort zone with this one; it was almost uncomfortably real. I suppose I appreciate the surrealism at the ending now that I’m reflecting on how bleak the main story got. Besides the more obvious themes (e.g., martyrdom, whether life & death can ever mean enough, if art can actually heal anything or if it’s just something to pursue relentlessly when it feels like there’s nothing else that really matters) something that comes to mind is how this book made me recoil at the way we tend to reduce our parents to characters in the stories of our own lives, and never manage to fully appreciate the scope of their lives before us or during us. I think Cyrus’s pathological self-centeredness highlighted this. 

I’ve read so many theories about the ending and I don’t yet know what I want to believe. From death, to self inflicted death, to reconciliation, to metaphorical earth-shattering perspective shifts, to happiness, to the apocalypse, there’s obviously a lot of different perspectives from readers on this one. This unexpected last couple chapters led me to perhaps the most critical question I will ever encounter as a reader: Do I like open endings or do I hate them, actually? 

A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal

adventurous dark funny medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I read A Tempest of Tea and to be honest, it wasn’t a great read for me. The plot was fine—a group of people team up to complete a mission, not everyone is who they say they are, and everyone’s a comedian. I think the world building could have been stronger and none of the characters was as interesting as their internal monologues seem to tell us they were. At times it seemed like every character had an assigned personality trait and that was all they were. I wish they were more well rounded because with everyone sticking to their Thing, they fell kind of flat at times. 

The last quarter of the book was the most interesting by far! There were reveals and new questions that far outweighed all of the drawn out set up at the beginning. The set up leading to the heist, the heist itself, and the immediate fallout all pale in comparison to the amount of intrigue and plot development shoved into that final bit. I wish the heist had been over with way earlier so we could have gotten more of the intrigue introduced at the end. The final quarter was the section where characters finally started getting a bit more interesting and the true plot started clicking. But something about this still seems imbalanced, because it shouldn’t have taken so long to get there. 

And one part of the story was so distracting… Everyone’s breath kept catching every time they made eye contact. Or their skin flushed or they got flustered or their stomach fluttered. Like some characters barely made it through a conversation without thinking to themselves how attractive the other person was. Aren’t you going to jail soon?? Isn’t your home in a pile of ashes right now?? Stand up! Everyone was too ridiculously distracted by crushes to be in the middle of a government take-down operation. There are bigger things to worry about and y’all are courting!! 

Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo

4.0

Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo

adventurous emotional hopeful

4.5

The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa

adventurous mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee

adventurous emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? N/A

4.0

I read Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee and quite enjoyed it. We follow Ester and her roc (giant-sized hunting bird) named Zahra as Ester learns how to care for, handle, and hunt with this huge dangerous animal. The goal for roc handlers is to kill manticores, which are also big scary flying creatures known to kill humans in gruesome attacks such as the one that killed most of Ester’s family. This book focuses on Ester’s passion for her calling and how it helped her find purpose in the world and eventually to let go of imagining these creatures as monsters with specific motivations and see them simply as animals doing what they instinctually know to do. I liked that aspect because it’s very much my taste when characters can think critically and evolve rather than experience a bad thing and never be able to see reason again. I liked that the creatures were not really companions to the humans in the sense that there was no reciprocal loyalty. They were wild and could survive without the humans and sometimes they left. Ester’s devotion to her training and her roc feels reverent at times, and her awe at the creature she works with is palpable. The pain of needing something that does not need you back the same way, and knowing you’ll have to let go, was a really interesting theme to explore in this short novella. The plot was focused on Ester’s learning journey, her emotional development as she learns to care for more than just her work with rocs, and of course on seeing what the rocs do in action. I’m personally a bit tired of that One Plot™️ that keeps getting run in to the ground in so many fantasy books over the last couple years so even though the scope of this story was small, I felt it was very unique and a refreshing way to experience a new world.

Forged by Blood by Ehigbor Okosun

fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

After a shaky start I chose to finish it just for the plot (the plot of my Instagram, not the plot of the book). What I felt about the beginning held true throughout — I doubt this was intentionally written for an adult audience, the main character was in love with a ~benevolent~ oppressor, and there was a lot of very unserious behavior happening. 

The writing itself was not to my taste. I think there was much to be desired in terms of characterization and world building. It was hard to figure where we were in time or place at any point. It’s odd to have characters go on a journey but seemingly cover no ground. The protagonist was used as a tool to very bluntly tell us every thing we needed to know, point by point, the second she saw it. This style left very little room for the reader’s consideration of the world or the themes. I think the best thing that could have happened in the editing room was deciding on the audience first and therefore rendering it unnecessary to explain very clear concepts and themes in such a heavy-handed way. 

The main character was also not a favorite of mine. She was judgmental and hypocritical and it was difficult to understand why she found it reasonable to hold everyone but herself to an extremely high moral standard while under literal violent occupation. She was ultimately more interested in herself and her own history than anyone else around her. In the middle of people dying she’d be like, “wait you knew my father?” I’d be sick to my stomach if I was one of the people waiting on her to save me! 

Son of the Storm by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

adventurous dark hopeful tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I finished Son of the Storm and I enjoyed it enough I’d like to continue the series! 3.75 stars? Maybe more? This book is “a sweeping tale of violent conquest and forbidden magic set in a world inspired by the pre-colonial empires of West Africa.” I think readers who enjoy a medium paced, plot-driven story with a sprawling world containing a distinct cultural landscape will enjoy this. I do wish the core cast for the sequel had been introduced earlier, but as an epic fantasy series I can understand why the author took his time to meander through the set up. I think the writing was very good, though a bit distant from emotion at times for my taste. I like that in the end, we were set up to expand the world even more through a new community of characters. I like that the author took risks by k*lling off characters! Stakes were high though reactions were a bit.. lacking? Nonplussed? Regardless, I liked it!

I found some character POVs were much more enjoyable than others. Esheme creeps me out tbh. I do appreciate the attention to creating a complex, power hungry, female character with interesting flaws and scary ambition. But, though her chapters were important, I didn’t enjoy them as much. She’s very manipulative which explains why there are people who remain loyal to her…but also does it? It seems wild to me that so many people just stick around and do her bidding while she’s like one unpleasant bite of food away from becoming a mass murderer every second of the day.

[⚠️ out of context kinda spoilery section follows] I think Esheme’s coldness towards pregnancy aligns with her character but does rub me the wrong way (i.e. ambitious women are un-motherly icicle droids). Also, the relationship that pops up with Igan felt so odd to me. She immediately believes that Igan will be obsessed with her and isn’t skeptical at all about their intentions. If she’s right, then that’s so convenient it borders on ridiculous. Why do things just keep working out for her? But if she’s wrong, I can’t wait to see it blow up in her face.

Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

dark funny mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

“My mother called me selfish and so selfish I became.” I finished Land of Milk and Honey during a long-ish drive yesterday. It’s a weird, curious, kinda gross, and infused with social commentary on several things including consumerism, greed, rejection, the environment, selfishness, the arrogance of humans, and of course, pleasure. It’s always a bit creepy to read about a near-future dystopian world that feels just a liiiiitle too close to what we already survive through today. We’ve all seen the hubris of the disgustingly rich play out in real time in increasingly awful ways (i.e. the submarine that couldn’t). Among other things, Land of Milk and Honey uses food and the life of a young chef to explore what it means to truly have and enjoy something in life. Readers also get to see how creativity and resilience plays out in disturbing and inspiring ways among the haves and the have-nots, respectively. 

Here are my thoughts! 1) I liked the themes Zhang explored and I think this novel does offer a fresh perspective, though it does use familiar characters and concepts that readers of The Great Gatsby will definitely notice. Some characters feel like they were plucked out of that story and then built upon for this more modern novel. 2) If I was reading this with a book club I might pose a question about why our protagonist believes having a better mother-daughter relationship would have changed what a total creep Aida was. 3) Overall the writing was excellent, but I didn’t love it all the way through. There were points when I felt the vagueness of the writing seemed like a gap in the narrative that needed to be filled out more. 4) I also wonder what this would have been like with another perspective, even just at the end, to challenge the narrator a bit. 5) Who would have known how prevalent a reference [redacted for spoilerish content] circa 1986 would have become to my life since learning about it during a law school writing course? 

Fool's Quest by Robin Hobb

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

5.0