ergative's reviews
1012 reviews

The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo

3.0

First of all, this book takes a TURN that renders it substantially less similar to the bluebeard-esque narrative that it resembles for the first three quarters. That is to the good, and I was taken quite by surprise when it happened. But all the same, I keep reading these books in the hopes of recovering the structural brilliance that so impressed me about The Emperess of Salt and Fortune, and WHen The Tiger Came Down the Mountain. But I think Vo has abandoned that type of storytelling for this series, and I keep getting disappointed, as I was here. I think I might give up on the series, at this point. It's just not giving me what I want out of it.

Venus in Copper by Lindsey Davis

4.25

I liked this the best of the first three books in this series. The plot was twisty but not convoluted, and I was able to keep up with it; and it did a wonderful job of evoking Ancient Rome as a proper setting. The first two books do a certain amount of travelling, so we never really spend serious time in Rome The City. This time we did, and it really came alive.

I also enjoyed the musical chairs poisoning shenanigans. I love me a good poisoning.

Nettleblack by Nat Reeve

3.75

A lively, queer romp about a small town's benighted detective agency, in which a severed head keeps disappearing and reappearing inconveniently, murderous hair-thieves are terrorizing the populace, and quite a lot of Gilbert and Sullivan is referenced. Also a ferret. Possibly a smidge longer than it needed to be; a lot of the entertaining chaos could have been tightened up a bit. But overall, a fun ride.

Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan

4.0

I really enjoyed this! It did the meta-fictional thing quite well, tying together Rae's experiences in the real world with her reactions to the world of the book quite beautifully. I'm not entirely sure that the head-hopping worked, because that shifted the narrative from this self-aware genre-savvy approach into people who were fully embedded in the world, and took everything seriously; but I could see what Brennan was doing with it: sort of prompting the reader to start approaching these characters as real pepole, exactly the way Rae starts doing, by showing us this secondary world through their own eyes. In the end I was fully on board with it. 

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

3.0

This book was trying to do three things, of which it did only one well. (1) A meditation on immigration and assimiliation in an alien world; (2) a time-travelling spy thriller; (3) a romance. 

The first was . . . fine. Competent, but not terribly deep. I was struck by the moment when our narrator reveals 20th century atrocities by mentionoing the Holocaust (or, in another timeline, 9/11) -- when her whole Thing is that her mother escaped the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It seems like kind of a missed opportunity to tie her own backstory with the events of the book. 

The time-travelling thriller was not terribly satisfying, and I ended up getting confused about who the baddies actually are. Like, if Quentin was the (first) mole, then why did he give all of those key documents to our narrator?

And the sex was just not at all sexy. Like, extremely unsexy, actually. I'm not going to say what needed to change about it, because I have no expertise in this area. Even in my fanfiction years I never tried to write smut. But gosh, it left me cold. 

Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera

I cannot give this a rating. I don't know what I think. I don't know if I liked it. This is not a book for mere mortals like myself to subject to something as vulgar and profane as reviewing. I will say, however, that there's a bit on pg 245 that sums up the entire reading experience. I just about thought I was getting a handle on what was going on, and then the narrator helpfully articulates my thoughts, and then grandmother says, 'You say you get it, but then you talk like you don't get it.' Kind of a slap in the face.

No! No comprehension for you!

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

3.5

There was a lot to like about this -- in particular the premise (independent spy-for-hire goes undercover to entrap a super-kooky enviro-commune group into murdering a politician). I really enjoyed the narrator's scorn for everyone she interacts with. But the group's fuondational big-daddy Bruno, whose emails the narrator hacks and reads, gets a sort of respect in the narrative that seems undermined by his profound kookiness. Is it a wisdom-despite kind of thing? Is the idea that, underneath all his weird ideas, Bruno has a kernel of understanding that is valuable? Or does Kushner actually want us to believe that Bruno was on to something deep when he insists that Neanderthals smoked tobacco and Polynesians navigated the ocean by attending to the sway of their testicles? Are the narrator's evident faults in perception and morality the very thing that makes her vulnerable to Bruno's kooky-ass influence? I can't tell. It all feels very literary, and the ambiguity makes me uncomfortable. I really do worry that Kushner might believe in testicle-compasses.

Shadows in Bronze by Lindsey Davis

4.0

As fun as the first. I do love Falco's narration. And I'm always just barely holding on to the plot details with my fingernails.

DallerGut Dream Department Store by Mi-Ye Lee 이미예

3.0

This has a lot in common with 'We'll Prescribe You a Cat': A very whimsical, episodic tale about a supernatural institution whose role is to prescribe mundane elements of human existance to make people's lives better. In this case, the world-building was better conceived: Alongside the mundane waking world is a parallel world we go to when we sleep, with its own currency and inhabitants, whose primary jobs and economy are powered, Monsters Inc-like, by the production and sale of dreams. When you go to sleep, you appear in this parallel world, and can purchase particular dreams. Different dreammakers are revered as cultural icons in this dreamworld, with Oscars-like ceremonies to celebrate their creations, prizes for bestselling dreammakers, schools to train new generations of dreammakers, and so on. When you wake you have no memory of visiting this world and making your purchase, but you do recall the effect of the dream. 

It's all rather cute. One dreammaker specialises in dog dreams. But still: it was more an exploration of an idea, rather than a fully conceived story. Undemanding, with some surprisingly moving bits (dying people can buy dreams to leave behind for their loved ones), but I'm not raring to read more. The novelty of its conceit is pretty much all it's got going for it. The characters are one-dimensional and obvious; the plot is non-existant, and the writing (or quality of translation) is awfully pedestrian. And now that I've experienced the novelty, I don't see the need for more of the same.

The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills

3.5

 This felt a lot like it was doing the same sort of thing as Some Desperate Glory, but with less imaginative plot construction. I find interlacing timelines very, very hard to do well. There was nothing about Zemya's process of indoctrination that we learned in the past timeline that couldn't have been portrayed equally effectively by showing us the end state in the present. And I always get bored by the past timelines because I know how things are going to shake out.