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flying_monkey's reviews
499 reviews
The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
There are some very strong aspects to this debut fantasy novel. The notion of doors between worlds is hardly a new one, but the way in which it's used here is quite effective, particularly the concept of a secret society that might be trying to close doors and prevent travel between worlds is deployed well, although again, this anti-magic or anti-secret powers society is a staple of fantasy novels too.
Given the at the world-building isn't original in most ways, novels like this rely on the quality of the writing and the characters. The former is strong, it has flourishes without being florid and it has a well-judged balance of scene-setting description and action-driven plotting. In terms of character, in January Scaller, the willful and adventurous product of a hardbitten poor white southern family and a mysterious dark-skinned father, who may just have some kind of magical powers, we have in many ways the perfect protagonist through which to explore not only the multiverse but also American society in the first half of the Twentieth Century. There is also a uniformally effective supporting cast of heroes and villains.
We find January at the start of the novel in a thoroughly gothic situation, being raised by a wealthy guardian, Mr Locke, who fills his mansion with treasures from around the world and some that seem well, from elsewhere, including one special chest in which presents always seem to appear for January, perhaps from January's father, who is employed by Locke to find these things and spends very little time with his daughter. Several things happen in succession to change her apparently comfortable situation: she acquires a large and unpopular dog, called Sindbad, but known thenceforward as Bad, January finds a mysterious book called The Ten Thousand Doors which calls strongly to her, a strong African woman, Jane, arrives supposedly requested by January's father to be her companion, and then shortly afterwards her father disappears while in Japan. As her situation starts to seem decidedly unsafe, January and her dog, new companion and her paramour, Samuel, end up leaving to find their way to and through the doors to other worlds.
There are things about the novel I liked less. I'm not much of a dog person, and I really don't like the way that they smell, so the constant descriptions of how January sleeping with and smelling her dog etc. left me feeling a bit queasy, but that is just me. More critically, there was a bit too much 'love will resolve everything' that really just filled large plot holes in some places. The potential of the other worlds was in some ways underused, and frankly they were mostly not that marvellous or mysterious, at least not the ones the story visited: we get to hear about stranger and more extreme worlds, but we just don't go to them. There was a also a little too much of the 'dea! / not dead!' type of reveals, which I can't talk about too much other than to say that more than once a character is presumed dead, and there are all the subsequent recriminations and emotional pain, and then they aren't after all. This is more than a little emotionally manipulative rather than creating a feeling of more genuine emotional development, and once again, it fills plot holes. Most of the time though, the story moves a long at a pace, propelled by the fluid writing that allows for these shortcoming to be passed over swiftly. It's a very good debut novel.
PS: I've seen more than a few people describing this as a young adult novel, indeed it's been placed in this category here on StoryGraph. Being someone who was reading adult novels when was 8 or 9, I never really understood this category, but I don't think it's an accurate description. I think rather it's a reflection of the prejudice that assumes that any SF or fantasy novel that has a young female protaganonist must be written only for other young women - see also Nnedi Okorafor's Binti sequence which is also not YA but some people seem to think it must be. This is a modern fantasy novel. And it's a good example of its type.
Given the at the world-building isn't original in most ways, novels like this rely on the quality of the writing and the characters. The former is strong, it has flourishes without being florid and it has a well-judged balance of scene-setting description and action-driven plotting. In terms of character, in January Scaller, the willful and adventurous product of a hardbitten poor white southern family and a mysterious dark-skinned father, who may just have some kind of magical powers, we have in many ways the perfect protagonist through which to explore not only the multiverse but also American society in the first half of the Twentieth Century. There is also a uniformally effective supporting cast of heroes and villains.
We find January at the start of the novel in a thoroughly gothic situation, being raised by a wealthy guardian, Mr Locke, who fills his mansion with treasures from around the world and some that seem well, from elsewhere, including one special chest in which presents always seem to appear for January, perhaps from January's father, who is employed by Locke to find these things and spends very little time with his daughter. Several things happen in succession to change her apparently comfortable situation: she acquires a large and unpopular dog, called Sindbad, but known thenceforward as Bad, January finds a mysterious book called The Ten Thousand Doors which calls strongly to her, a strong African woman, Jane, arrives supposedly requested by January's father to be her companion, and then shortly afterwards her father disappears while in Japan. As her situation starts to seem decidedly unsafe, January and her dog, new companion and her paramour, Samuel, end up leaving to find their way to and through the doors to other worlds.
There are things about the novel I liked less. I'm not much of a dog person, and I really don't like the way that they smell, so the constant descriptions of how January sleeping with and smelling her dog etc. left me feeling a bit queasy, but that is just me. More critically, there was a bit too much 'love will resolve everything' that really just filled large plot holes in some places. The potential of the other worlds was in some ways underused, and frankly they were mostly not that marvellous or mysterious, at least not the ones the story visited: we get to hear about stranger and more extreme worlds, but we just don't go to them. There was a also a little too much of the 'dea! / not dead!' type of reveals, which I can't talk about too much other than to say that more than once a character is presumed dead, and there are all the subsequent recriminations and emotional pain, and then they aren't after all. This is more than a little emotionally manipulative rather than creating a feeling of more genuine emotional development, and once again, it fills plot holes. Most of the time though, the story moves a long at a pace, propelled by the fluid writing that allows for these shortcoming to be passed over swiftly. It's a very good debut novel.
PS: I've seen more than a few people describing this as a young adult novel, indeed it's been placed in this category here on StoryGraph. Being someone who was reading adult novels when was 8 or 9, I never really understood this category, but I don't think it's an accurate description. I think rather it's a reflection of the prejudice that assumes that any SF or fantasy novel that has a young female protaganonist must be written only for other young women - see also Nnedi Okorafor's Binti sequence which is also not YA but some people seem to think it must be. This is a modern fantasy novel. And it's a good example of its type.
Crime Novel by Kristian London, Petri Tamminen
dark
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
It probably seemed like a great idea - it is a great idea - to write a parody of dark and moody Finnish crime novels. And for a few pages, this seems like it might be the parody we were looking for: instead of tracking a serial killer, our self-doubting policeman protaganist is involved in a hopeless search for a man who isn't so much a criminal as somone who just systematically demoralizes people and makes them lose their mojo. But it's not enough to have an idea and I think that fundamentally that is all Tamminen had here. There's really nothing else. Our hero wanders around aimlessly in the dismal Finnish winter. He speculate about his wasted life and failed relationship. He wonders if he might have better luck with a Norwegian detective who writes to him about happiness. But of course he doesn't. Nothing continues to happen, but this author simply doesn't have the philosophical chops of some of the great existentialist masters of inaction, nor is he funny enough to carry us through the lack of story or insight.
Until Thy Wrath be Past by Åsa Larsson, Laurie Thompson
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
The Second Deadly Sin by Åsa Larsson, Laurie Thompson
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
The Black Path by Åsa Larsson, Marlaine Delargy
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
The Blood Spilt by Åsa Larsson
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis
adventurous
emotional
fast-paced
2.5
I'm not sure why I picked this up other than I seemed to remember people talking about it as one of the SF novels of the year. If it is, then it really was a poor year for SF. I had no idea who the author is other than that this is a debut novel. From what I've since read she's a film critic vlogger, and some people have called this Transformers fanfic but, while there are transformer-like elements to the aliens, that seems to be an accusation that comes from pre-existing animus towards the author rather than actually reading the book.
However, from the clunky title onwards, this is a very weak novel without being overtly terrible. It's set in the mid-2000s, with our heroine, Cora Sabino, a drop-out from a college linguistics degree program, doing a crappy job that her mother has got for her. Her father, Nils Ortega, has left for Germany, where he is a Julian Assange-esque whistleblower and political refugee, running a Wikileaks-a-like site, 'The Broken Seal'. While he was initially provoked by the invasion of Iraq now, after a mysterious asteroid strike in California, her father now claims to have discovered evidence that the government is in contact with extraterrestrials, which seems to make Cora a magnet for her father's disciples as well as strange man in aviators driving black cars. And what's more, this all seems to involve her sister, Luciana.
Of course it turns out that Nils is right, and of course Cora turns out to be the one whom the aliens, or at least one of them code-named Ampersand, can communicate with, via some technologically enabled telepathy. The author has clearly watched Arrival (or read Ted Chiang's original 'Story of Your Life') a lot. Mysterious hand-waving advanced technology that allows improbable things to happen pop up all the time in this book, and this is merely the first instance. The aliens themselves are biotechnological beings, reminiscent in some ways of Gwyneth Jones's far more genuinely alien Aleutians in her Universe of Things stories, and can use their bodies in some very non-biological ways (hence the Transformers fanfic accusations, I suppose). And finally the other obvious influence is Cixin Liu's Three-Body Problem sequence, from which Ellis appears to have borrowed the entire central dilemma of first contact, but without improving on it at all. Eventually, the book devolves into the usual running, chasing and fighting in the second half, which is only leavened by the often ridiculous YA-style 'relationship' between Cora and Ampersand, which is clearly intended to be the weighty emotional heart, if not the entire point, of the book.
I really got the feeling there were a lot of personal issues being worked out in this book, which can make for the best kind of fiction, but here it just seemed to be a lot of extraneous stuff that served to pad what is in the end a weak, derivative and unoriginal first contact story, which rather than simply being set more than a decade ago, feels dated.
The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
I enjoyed The Honjin Murders (my review is also on here) just enough to read this second-translated but actually 6th in a sequence of dozens of Detective Kindaichi novels written by Seishi Yokomizu. The crimes in both are overly intricate and bloody, and in this case happen as the detective watches helpless, and while he eventually 'solves' the murders, he could have prevented them if he was really as clever as we are constantly told he is. Anyway, this one involves a damaged and disfigured man who returns from the war after his grandfather's death, wearing a rubber facemask to cover his injury. Is he really who he appears to be? And why did the rags-to-riches silk-baron patriarch of the Inugami family set up such a fiendish situation with his will, which seems designed to set sister against sister, brother against brother. Suspects are presented to us like a line-up: is it the impossibly beautiful adoptive daughter, Tamayo, or her brutish and protective retainer, 'Monkey'? Could it be one of the three half-sisters, each one born of a different mistress? Could it be one their sons? If you like old-fashioned crime novels that hinge on coincidences and hidden identities, and suspicious characters who are suddently introduced late on, you might enjoy this. The novels are really not great as crime novels, but they are quite interesting as family melodramas that cast some sociological light on Japan in the immediate post-WW2 era.
Numero Zero by Umberto Eco
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
This is very late, and very lightweight Eco. For sure, it has the foundation for a classic Eco novel, mixing real historical conspiracies (allied stay-behind forces in Europe after WW2 and the CIA-backed Gladio network of anti-communists formed from ex-fascists) and the fictional (the idea that Mussolini didn't die at the end of WW2 but was saved by the Vatican). But the basic plot about a fake newspaper that serves no real purpose other than to bring the characters together and allow some very broad satire about politics and the media. And yet again there is a May-to-December romance between the ageing writer-protagonist and a much younger female journalist, although at least this time it's a real romance rather than a lifelong obsession. And it all just comes to a sudden end when Eco seems to have become bored. Foucault's Pendulum, this ain't.
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
Here it is Interior Chinatown, the state to which every Asian who has failed achieve the American dream is reduced, where despite their hard work, their super-high GPAs, their multiple languages and interests, they are forced to play generic Asian background parts in a stereotyped police procedural, 'Black and White', the names reflecting not only those of the real stars, but also the identities which an Asian can never achieve. Our hero, the book's hero, Willis Wu, is never the hero of 'Black and White', he is almost always Generic Asian Man, or perhaps, if he is lucky, Recurring Asian Character, or Special Guest Star, in which roles he might last more than one episode before being killed, tragically, again... and again. But Willis wants more, he wants to be Kung-Fu Guy, the utlimate Asian role, like his Dad, who although he is just Old Asian Man now, was once Kung-Fu Guy and even Sifu, the wise Asian teacher. Surely there can't be any more than this for an Asian in America?
challenging
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
After only 3 or 4 books, Charles Yu has already developed a certain style. His tales tend to be quite simple stories of love and family when all the frills are cut away, and set in very contained settings, pocket universes either literally of figuratively. In this one, he's expanding on his personal personal very much to the political: this is a story about being Asian in America (any kind of Asian - doesn't matter because they all look the same, right?). But rather like How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, the American in which the protagonist lives seems strangely small and circumsribed by almost game-like rules.
Here it is Interior Chinatown, the state to which every Asian who has failed achieve the American dream is reduced, where despite their hard work, their super-high GPAs, their multiple languages and interests, they are forced to play generic Asian background parts in a stereotyped police procedural, 'Black and White', the names reflecting not only those of the real stars, but also the identities which an Asian can never achieve. Our hero, the book's hero, Willis Wu, is never the hero of 'Black and White', he is almost always Generic Asian Man, or perhaps, if he is lucky, Recurring Asian Character, or Special Guest Star, in which roles he might last more than one episode before being killed, tragically, again... and again. But Willis wants more, he wants to be Kung-Fu Guy, the utlimate Asian role, like his Dad, who although he is just Old Asian Man now, was once Kung-Fu Guy and even Sifu, the wise Asian teacher. Surely there can't be any more than this for an Asian in America?
Interior Chinatown is very, very clever. It plays this all straight but also manages to tell the 'backstories', something of the real struggles of real Asian people in America, both individually and collectively. Chunks of real history arrive unepectedly, juxtaposed with scripts in progress from Black and White. Erving Goffman's famous research on the performance of everyday life is quoted. Even when Willis starts to achieve a measure of happiness it somehow seems even less real, however emotionally rich the experience might appear to be. If there are weaknesses, they are the same sort of weaknesses that How To Live Safely... had, which is that the emotionality can seem at once overdone and rather flat and facile. But this is still a throught-provoking, powerful, very sarcastic book that will stay with you after you've finished.