Take a photo of a barcode or cover
ergative's reviews
1057 reviews
The Waking of Angantyr by Marie Brennan
3.75
I always enjoy reading Marie Brennan's work. This one had a real suck-you-in quality that I appreciate, and I gobbled it up. The author's note in the back is not to be missed, by the way: in brief, the genesis of this tale is as a fix-it fanfic of a Norse Saga that had an extremely disappointing conclusion -- but you should read the full details for yourself. Still, the story relied on repeated invocations of my least favourite trope: a woman dressed as a man, who is revealed as a woman, and loses everything that she managed to build up while dressed as a man. I hate it so much, and it happens multiple times here. And somehow, because of the requirement to start over after trope-revelation, we have multiple sets of characters, which means I can never really build up much sense of relationship to any one set of them. This means that their tragic ends (usually at the hands of someone going berserk and slaughtering them all -- Norse saga, remember) doesn't hit as hard as it might.
Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones
4.25
This was very weird and bonkers in a way that worked very effectively. The high-tech interstellar galaxy-wide corporate civilization sat cheek-by-jowl with a more mythic-feeling, personal fantasy about an odd bit of forest with strange people in it, where time runs out of order; but the integration was effective. The final revelations of how everything fit together was a bit sprawling in a way that I remember always left me feeling a bit dizzy when I read Diana Wynne Jones as a child (we really didn't need Arthurian mythology shoved in there, to be honest); but overall this was playful and creative and I look forward to unpacking it with my book group.
Foulsham by Edward Carey
3.5
Again, weird and effective! I think the structure of the plot wasn't quite as clear as in the first book -- Book 2 itis -- but it does a great job of expanding the setting and deepening the magic and the ending makes me very eager to read book 3.
The Belton Estate by Anthony Trollope
2.0
Not one of Trollope's best. His books are really good when they pit the marriage plot against some other element of institutional structure: the Church (Barsetshire), Parliament (Palliser), Finance (The Way We Live Now), fox hunting (all of them, really, but especially The American Senator). Even the execrable Dr Whortle's School was pitting a couple of marriage-plot type things against each other, with a backdrop of private education as an institution.
But this book had none of that. It was just the marriage plot, and an awfully boring marriage plot at that. Our young heroine, Clara Amedroz, must choose between the Good Lover, Will Belton, who is bluff and hearty and impatient in his love and dreadfully dull; and the much more interesting Bad Lover, Captain Aylmer, who is an MP (of course) of aristocratic family. He's not a bad lover because he's a rake, but rather because he is not capable of being sincere and genuine in his love. He shows different faces to different parts of the world, depending on the role he's playing: a dutiful nephew to a mutual aunt he shares with Clara; a dutiful son to his overbearing mother; a politician to his constituents, a man of the world in London. Our heroine is a much more interesting person at the beginning of the book, when she's talking to him. She makes trenchant remarks about how women are seen as hypocrites if they adapt their behaviour to different situations, whereas for men it's accepted. This, of course, is how we know that Aylmer is a bad lover; because he's benefiting from the ability to do exactly what Trollope is telling us (through Clara's voice) is bad no matter who does it. But the fact that he and Clara can have these conversations means that they make the book so worth reading, unlike when Clara's talking to Will Belton. Then she descends back into Trollope's ubiquitous role for young women: 'oh, I'm much too virtuous to say exactly what I want, and must demure and pretend I'm not in love!' I swear, Trollope is so much better at character development when he's not trying to shove virtuous young women into the right person's arms.
I want justice for Aylmer! There's so much scope for character work with him. He has genuine conversations about things other than tedious love-talk with our heroine, and although he is fully under the thumb of his overbearing mother, he is still governed by a genuine sense of honor and desire to do the right thing that is all his own. Wouldn't it be interesting to see him meet a heroine who, rather than deploring the accepted hypocrisy of men, is instead able to help him harness it, and indeed harness it in herself? The largest reason things break down between Clara and Aylmer is because Clara cannot subjugate herself to Aylmer's mother. But a true match for Aylmer would know how to present a subjugated face to Aylmer's mother, while in fact doing exactly as she likes when not in her presence. This book would have been so, so much better if Clara and Belton's true, sincere, unchanging personalities were set as foils against the hypocritical, changeable, ever-shifting personalities that Aylmer and his own eventual bride offer, as an alternative way to interact with the world.
There was certainly room enough to do it. As it was, the thin, unsatisfying plot was tiresome and repetitive, with nothing to offset the tedious virtue-focused marriage plot that is always the boringest part of every Trollope novel. If that had been trimmed, and an Aylmer foil-plot built in, this book would have been terrific. As it was, ugh.
But this book had none of that. It was just the marriage plot, and an awfully boring marriage plot at that. Our young heroine, Clara Amedroz, must choose between the Good Lover, Will Belton, who is bluff and hearty and impatient in his love and dreadfully dull; and the much more interesting Bad Lover, Captain Aylmer, who is an MP (of course) of aristocratic family. He's not a bad lover because he's a rake, but rather because he is not capable of being sincere and genuine in his love. He shows different faces to different parts of the world, depending on the role he's playing: a dutiful nephew to a mutual aunt he shares with Clara; a dutiful son to his overbearing mother; a politician to his constituents, a man of the world in London. Our heroine is a much more interesting person at the beginning of the book, when she's talking to him. She makes trenchant remarks about how women are seen as hypocrites if they adapt their behaviour to different situations, whereas for men it's accepted. This, of course, is how we know that Aylmer is a bad lover; because he's benefiting from the ability to do exactly what Trollope is telling us (through Clara's voice) is bad no matter who does it. But the fact that he and Clara can have these conversations means that they make the book so worth reading, unlike when Clara's talking to Will Belton. Then she descends back into Trollope's ubiquitous role for young women: 'oh, I'm much too virtuous to say exactly what I want, and must demure and pretend I'm not in love!' I swear, Trollope is so much better at character development when he's not trying to shove virtuous young women into the right person's arms.
I want justice for Aylmer! There's so much scope for character work with him. He has genuine conversations about things other than tedious love-talk with our heroine, and although he is fully under the thumb of his overbearing mother, he is still governed by a genuine sense of honor and desire to do the right thing that is all his own. Wouldn't it be interesting to see him meet a heroine who, rather than deploring the accepted hypocrisy of men, is instead able to help him harness it, and indeed harness it in herself? The largest reason things break down between Clara and Aylmer is because Clara cannot subjugate herself to Aylmer's mother. But a true match for Aylmer would know how to present a subjugated face to Aylmer's mother, while in fact doing exactly as she likes when not in her presence. This book would have been so, so much better if Clara and Belton's true, sincere, unchanging personalities were set as foils against the hypocritical, changeable, ever-shifting personalities that Aylmer and his own eventual bride offer, as an alternative way to interact with the world.
There was certainly room enough to do it. As it was, the thin, unsatisfying plot was tiresome and repetitive, with nothing to offset the tedious virtue-focused marriage plot that is always the boringest part of every Trollope novel. If that had been trimmed, and an Aylmer foil-plot built in, this book would have been terrific. As it was, ugh.
The Ape Who Guards the Balance by Elizabeth Peters
3.5
On the one hand, I enjoy how the series is giving larger and larger roles to the new generation, but I find moony lovelorn Ramses so dull. Emerson and Peabody are presented with a tongue-in-cheek poke at the types they represent. But Ramses and Nefrette seem to demand to be taken seriously, which is so much less fun. Good to see how Peabody's own internal prejudices (which were pretty darn evident in the first few books!) are being called out explicitly, but it did feel a little bit forced. Still, I quite enjoyed the discussion of Davis's wildly incompetent treatment of his tomb, which seems to reflect quite extensive research into the matter, to the point that, for the first time in the series, the book begins with an offer to send a full bibliography to any reader who writes in with a self-addressed stamped return envelope. Peters has receipts!
Erasure by Percival Everett
4.5
An excellent indictment of a trend in publishign that hasn't really changed that much since 2001 or so, when the book first came out: minority 'own voices' writers seem to struggle to gain recognition to write about anything except 'own voices' fiction. If a black guy wants to write novels that are structural commentaries on post-modernist blah blah Derrida, no one is interested. But if he writes, as a complete joke, the most stereotyped, offensive, racist depiction of Black youth doing crimes in the inner city, he is lauded for his 'realness' and 'rawness' and 'truth-speaking' and so on. It's Poe's Law before Poe wrote the law.
I found this very funny, and effective at making its point--not least because it was equally willing to skewer the hyper-intellectual literary theory crowd. I'm not sure we really needed all those pages of the satire novel (which was incredibly disagreeable to wade through), but otherwise it was great.
I found this very funny, and effective at making its point--not least because it was equally willing to skewer the hyper-intellectual literary theory crowd. I'm not sure we really needed all those pages of the satire novel (which was incredibly disagreeable to wade through), but otherwise it was great.
Heap House by Edward Carey
4.0
How odd and imaginative and moody! It has a lot of the same feel as Gormenghast and Mordew -- strange, grotesque place, people by strange, grotesque characters -- but, crucially, without any of the disagreeableness. It's weird in a good way.
A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss
3.25
I went through a huge David Liss phase back in . . . 2008 or so? 2010? Anyway, he's written more since then, so I thought to give him another look, starting with a reread of this book, the first Benjamin Weaver story. And . . . he's fine. This is a perfectly fine historical thriller about stock market shenanigans, which is perhaps slightly more ambitious in its aims than its execution.
The ambitious aims revolve around changes in thought that characterized the early 18th century, specifically the rise in deductive reasoning, courtesy of the Scottish Enlightenment; and the shift in economics to see bank notes as equally valuable as gold and silver, even though they represented (at the time, pre-fiat currency) nothing more than an institution's promise to pay gold and silver later. Wealth changes from a piece of metal to people's beliefs and trust in a piece of paper. These ideas combine in the rise of the stock market: paper can be incredibly valuable, if it represents the promise of a company to pay dividends to shareholders, but only if the value of the paper rises (which it will only do if people believe it to be valuable); so decisions in stock-market purchases are themselves a game in probabilities. And his decision to have our narrator be a lapsed Jew offers an additional side of the narrative: he is an observer, but not quite a participant, in both Jewish and Christian London of the era, at a time when Jews have a very particular relation to finance. (Liss really likes Jewish narrators.)
But somehow, although it all sounds very erudite and thoughtful when I describe it, Liss's engagement with these ideas feels... clumsy? A little obvious? There's a Scottish doctor who name-drops Enlightenment names and explains didactically what it means to reason from probabilities, and why people are so uneasy at the economic shift from hard currency to promises and paper currency. Wikipedia tells me that this was actually his first book, so possiblly it's just first-novel syndrome. I think I'll continue to read his Benjamin Weaver books and see if they get better.
The ambitious aims revolve around changes in thought that characterized the early 18th century, specifically the rise in deductive reasoning, courtesy of the Scottish Enlightenment; and the shift in economics to see bank notes as equally valuable as gold and silver, even though they represented (at the time, pre-fiat currency) nothing more than an institution's promise to pay gold and silver later. Wealth changes from a piece of metal to people's beliefs and trust in a piece of paper. These ideas combine in the rise of the stock market: paper can be incredibly valuable, if it represents the promise of a company to pay dividends to shareholders, but only if the value of the paper rises (which it will only do if people believe it to be valuable); so decisions in stock-market purchases are themselves a game in probabilities. And his decision to have our narrator be a lapsed Jew offers an additional side of the narrative: he is an observer, but not quite a participant, in both Jewish and Christian London of the era, at a time when Jews have a very particular relation to finance. (Liss really likes Jewish narrators.)
But somehow, although it all sounds very erudite and thoughtful when I describe it, Liss's engagement with these ideas feels... clumsy? A little obvious? There's a Scottish doctor who name-drops Enlightenment names and explains didactically what it means to reason from probabilities, and why people are so uneasy at the economic shift from hard currency to promises and paper currency. Wikipedia tells me that this was actually his first book, so possiblly it's just first-novel syndrome. I think I'll continue to read his Benjamin Weaver books and see if they get better.
The Gentleman and his Vowsmith by Rebecca Ide
3.0
Perfectly fine fluffy queer historical fantasy, but the thing about chucking dead bodies at your plot to make it go is that they have to actually make the plot go. If a dead body does nothing but keep the soggy center of the book idling in neutral, it seems awfully disrespectful to the characters who thought they were giving their fictional lives in service of moving things along.