eyeowna's reviews
158 reviews

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.5

This book is unsettling and slippery.

Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor

adventurous emotional slow-paced

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

4.5

4.5 stars, maybe a 5 if I think about it enough. I loved this novel! I read most of it in one day.

Whale Fall is a slow, quiet, vivid novel. In the late 1930s, on the cusp of another world war, the body of a whale washes up on the shore of a small Welsh island. We follow 18 year old Manod from the island’s small fishing community when, after the arrival of the whale, two English ethnographers turn up to write a book about the island. 

I loved Manod as a narrator. She’s smart and observant. She’s very caring to her family but in a realistic way—heavy responsibility was put on her shoulders very early. She has her own desires. Sometimes she swallows her own wants to care for her younger sister. In other ways she will not budge. You can also see how her understanding of the world is limited because she doesn’t know much beyond the island. And yet when another character calls her naive, you feel that in many ways that other character is more naive than Manod. 

The environmental beauty and culture on the island is tied together with the harsh realities of living in an isolated rural community. The throughline of the decomposing whale was just cool. The ethnographer characters are almost funny but also very much not in how they totally romanticize and misinterpret island life and the islanders. They made my teeth gnash together. Even so, I enjoyed the inclusion of some of their ethnographic notes into the novel, so maybe I’m just as bad re: the romanticization. 

I plan to reread this novel later to pay more attention to the writing style. I think this would be a great book to study for craft.

How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler

emotional informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

Enjoyed this collection of memoir essays that mixed science with the personal. Super interesting descriptions and stories about different sea creatures paired nicely with personal anecdotes/reflection on the author’s experiences being mixed race and queer. 

My main criticism is that some of the essays felt pretty “same-y” in structure, with alternating sections of science and memoir. I found it hard to get through several of the middle essays for that reason. Read on their own or paced out a bit more, this works totally fine. Last essay hit me like a sledgehammer though, OOF.

An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

2.5

Not the best Le Fanu I’ve read, but a fun Victorian ghost story all the same.

Green Tea by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

3.75

Drinking too much caffeine on little sleep while reading about the occult is a recipe for disaster, according to Le Fanu. Slow Victorian ghost story that verges onto psychological horror. Love a framing device. Vibes!

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

adventurous funny lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

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

2.75

Reading the sequel right after the first book made me enjoy this less than I might have if I’d waited, I think? Still had a fun time, just not as much as I did with book 1.

Things I liked:

- The beginning chaos at Cambridge was delightful.
- LOVED the new weird and creepy fairies. Snowbell the little fox demon who loves to brag <3 spooky mangy owl grotesques (they’re not gargoyles unless they have a water spout, Emily 🙄) with six legs my beloved <3
-

the Faerie kingdom Emily went into this time had David Bowie Labyrinth vibes (to me at least).

- having Rose as another dusty academic character was fun but I thought more could’ve been done with him.

Things I found frustrating:

-

Once we got further in the plot, there was just… a lot of wandering around Faerie… and then there was … more wandering around Faerie. After the trips to Faerie in the first book, the plot in the sequel felt same-y to me.

- I wanted more nerdy long winded footnotes!! Don’t skimp on the nerdy long winded footnotes, that’s what I signed up for!!
- You’re telling me Emily published her encyclopedia/academic book in the year or less-than gap between these two novels? Idk I find that quick academic publishing turn around the most unbelievable thing in this fairy book. I’m sorry!! This feels like a stupid nitpick from me about the cozy cottagecore light academia book series. But nonetheless I am bothered.
- My main gripe is that everything felt pretty easy. Solving the mystery (even the mystery itself) didn’t feel as earned as in the first book. Love having some magical items and helpers in a fairy tale, but idk, Emily’s successes MOSTLY felt pretty convenient for me

(except when she poisoned the queen. That was cool).

I might’ve just been in a cranky mood while reading this, tbh. I’ll read the third book and see! Thankfully, I’m forced to wait for it to be published so maybe I won’t feel as nitpicky.

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious relaxing fast-paced

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

3.75

Can’t decide between a 3 or 4 star rating. This book is COZY, it’s CUTE, it’s ANACHRONISTIC. This book is like if someone made one of those early aughts medievalism movies (y’know like Ella Enchanted going to Ye Medieval Shopping Mall or the whole Knight’s Tale movie) for the cottagecore-light-academia-core Howl’s Moving Castle obsessed online girlies. This book made my inner child who sucked up any reading material analyzing the literary and psychological meaning of fairy tales froth at the mouth. I read this book in a TWO DAY HAZE and didn’t sleep much for it, something that hasn’t happened to me since I was a teenager.

Anyway, if you like a light hearted/heart-warming rom com and fairy tales, this is the book for you. Just don’t expect anything period accurate about it being set in 1909.

A Botanical Daughter by Noah Medlock

adventurous dark emotional funny fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

So in the late 1800s, a gay couple comprising of a genius botanist and a taxidermist create a Frankenstein-esque sentient plant daughter (who is also gay) while living in a huge beautiful Victorian greenhouse.

I had a really fun time reading this. My background as an English lit major was a pro and con here. Pro: I enjoyed this queer found family take on (cozy) horror. This book is for anyone who read Frankenstein and wanted to shake Victor and say “treat your undead child right, you coward!!” The references to Victorian culture/technology and literature were fun. The flowery narrative style was mostly convincing for all this. The narration is quirky and very British in that way that can’t help making little jokes/being witty and silly (I am a fan of this).

Con: I wanted to nitpick so badly the entire time. I enjoyed the research/botanical aspects and the Frankenstein-monster is firmly sci-fi/fantasy. I still wondered what was scientifically period accurate (I’m going to go on an internet rabbit hole about this soon). More so, the queer aspects of the novel felt modern to me. At one point, the botanist disparages a past colleague/ex for living a “respectable” heterosexual life on the surface while hiding his homosexual tendencies. The need for secrecy and the criminalization of homosexuality is here for all characters, but the discussion and approach to this still just felt modern to me.

Also, the main couple’s characterization felt the least consistent and developed to me, which is a shame. They seemed to dramatically feel whatever they needed to for the plot at any given time. The character Jenny and the plant daughter were more consistent, but less developed.

Not really cons, I enjoyed them, but I noticed!!! : There are little modern internet gay jokes sprinkled throughout, such as how gay people can’t sit correctly in chairs. The word “queer” is used a lot in the Victorian sense but you can feel the modern cheekiness about it each time.

Anyway, I stopped my literary brain early on and read this as a Victorian gothic-style queer cozy horror fairy tale. Because of that, this was a quick read and I had a great time. I loved the horrifying plant woman 🌿

Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective relaxing medium-paced

4.0

This one is hard for me to rate! I loved learning about Kimmerer’s research experiences alongside her indigenous cultural history with nature. For my taste, I might have liked to have learned more deeply about mosses than spent time with Kimmerer’s personal narrative. Or, have more moss info added on to the narratives. That said, I could see that the way she combined science with narrative through metaphor/indigenous teaching was really nice even though I’m not a creative nonfiction-y person. There’s so much here to consider about naming things and/or turning things into an object. What do we remember and care about? What do we flatten or disrupt in nature with our personal desires? One story that will stick in my head was (and I’m summarizing this badly) a rich person who hired Kimmerer to give him advice on saving his moss garden. He had taken (exploded? Torn? Don’t remember) rocks off a cliff face where old mosses had grown very well, but the transplanted mosses started to die on his property. The desire to own and have the aesthetic of moss harmed the very thing the rich man wanted.

Also apparently some people harvest what are essentially old growth, slow-growing mosses for commercial use. Hate it!

There is way more to say and reflect on about this book, but I didn’t retain as much of it as I wanted.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author. Kimmerer is a soothing narrator—I’d listen to this to wind down at night while playing a puzzle game on my phone. But because of that, I feel like I missed out. User error on my part. Might reread and give this 5 stars (although my rating doesn’t really matter). Anyway: lovely, great time, we gotta protect mosses, mosses are the best.

Private Rites by Julia Armfield

dark emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I love Julia Armfield’s writing and was let down by the pacing of the first half of the novel. I enjoyed it but I was waiting for the uncanny/creepiness. At the halfway mark more things happened and then I found myself able to just enjoy existing in this bleak watery slow-burn/mundane apocalypse with these characters. And then that ending! Beautiful writing. Loved it.