historyofjess's reviews
2117 reviews

White Tears/Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad

challenging informative medium-paced

3.75

I've read enough books on topics like this that a lot of this content was fairly familiar to me (some of the books I've read were even quoted by the author), but I really liked about this book is that it presents a perspective from outside the United States. So many anti-racist books that I've read are from American authors, and even though Hamad takes plenty of aim at American culture, her view is a lot wider and it's really significant to understand that these issues cross borders and need to discussed and addressed everywhere.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 9 Volume 4: Welcome to the Team by Andrew Chambliss, Joss Whedon

adventurous fast-paced

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

3.0

Okay...so there's some stuff in here that's fun...mainly, Illyria. Illyria is always fun, even if her portion of the story feels abruptly cut off. Truthfully, with this being the penultimate volume of the season, everything feels cliffhangery and unsatisfying. I like the "surprise" an extra Slayer has been hanging around this entire time. I like that Willow's back even if it isn't for very much time and she doesn't get to do very much. Really, most of the stuff with Buffy in the first few issues isn't that bad...except there's a lot of other stuff going on at the same time that takes away from it.

But then, there's everything to do with Xander. As a die hard Buffy fan that's also very much a feminist, Xander is one of those characters that it's very hard to stomach on re-watches and re-reads. He has some good moments, but it's hard to overlook his very bad ones and that's even more true now knowing what a cad the person that created him is. And this whole storyline in this season of comics where Xander keeps lashing out violently is very, very not good and I do not like it at all. And here, we finally get a bit of an explanation for it...and it only makes it worse. And then, it just keeps getting worse. I guess Xander is one of the few Scoobies that never went on the "betrayal" arc and so it's his turn, but yikes on bikes, does this just follow all of the worst storytelling instincts for this character and I want none of it. I think it betrays the best bits of his character, all resting on his love for Dawn, which I still have heeby-jeebies about. So yeah, I don't like it. I don't want it. And I need Xander to stop being a rageaholic piss baby that thinks he can save the world be fixing everything he doesn't like about it.

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

adventurous dark hopeful mysterious fast-paced

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

4.5

I did not know I needed this book in my life, but boy howdy did it find it's way into my heart very quickly. First of all, making a horror story out of gay conversion therapy seems perfectly obvious in a lot of ways, but it still has to be done creatively and well and Tingle does both. But most of all, I cannot tell you how much I needed Rose in my life. A queer, autistic heroine is not a thing I have encountered before and I bonded with her so quickly (even if I have nothing like the upbringing she does). I felt her neurodivergence woven so thickly through the entire book and it's what elevated this from a fun, queer horror book to something very, very special to me. It's not tokenized and, while I feel her autism is a large part of why she escapes the torments and manipulations of Camp Damascus, it's still not written in an "actually, autism is a superpower" kind of way. And when Rose finds people that love and appreciate her for who she is and not who they want her to be, it's a really beautiful and moving thing.

The Ending Fire by Saara El-Arifi

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

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

3.0

Maybe it has something to do with the way things are going in the world right now, but I found, during the reading of this final volume, that I'm fatigued with these YA series that culminate in big wars. I really missed those intimate character moments from the first book. Instead, it just kept sprawling out until there were so many characters and so much scope that I found it difficult to remember what I enjoyed about this series at the start. There's some good stuff in here, but I just felt really exhausted by the end of this book. I was having trouble distinguishing between the tertiary characters that were getting focus at different points of the battle. There just kept being more fighting and death and not enough of the people at the heart of the story connecting with each other.

The Book of Elsewhere by China Miéville, Keanu Reeves

adventurous challenging mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

2.0

I did not enjoy this. At first I was getting a strong sense that this just might not be the type of book that I connect with and, while I still think that's true, I also just don't think it's that great of a book. It's unnecessarily dense, constantly skipping between perspectives and jumping through points in time and, in the midst of all of that density, I found it difficult to latch onto any of the characters in a meaningful way. To me this smacked of a sci-fi/fantasy novel that's so enamored with the big ideas that it wants to tackle that skips all the important story details that actually make a book worth the investment. Because of this, I was pretty checked out during the latter half of the book, so I have sense of what happened, plot-wise, but I lost all ability to care about it or register why it mattered.

Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice

dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.75

This was such an interesting take on a dystopian/apocalyptic event and I really loved the early parts of the book that focused on the indigenous community and not only how they reacted to the changes in the world, but how better prepared they were for it because of having lived so long without many modern conveniences. I don't say this often, but I wish it had been a bit longer. The latter half of the book felt like it skipped through time like a stone, with changes in the community happening largely unobserved by the main character and a greater focus on escalating tensions and stakes over the long winter, with less of the lived-in experiences of the characters that I had been introduced to in the early chapters. Still, I'm very intrigued by the follow-up novel to see what happens with these folks.

Moonbound by Robin Sloan

adventurous lighthearted medium-paced

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

4.0

I mean this in the best way possible: this is book is so weird. A mixture of both science fiction and fantasy, with a fascinating narrator—an artificial intelligence that inhabits the hero character, I never quite knew what to expect as I was reading this but I was always intrigued as to where things were heading. For me the one major thing lacking is that I didn't feel particularly attached to any of the characters. I was propelled by the creativity of the worldbuilding and novelty of the story, but the individuals that made up the story were a bit two-dimensional in most cases and I would have liked to have gotten to know them better (this may be a bit of a side effect of having the viewpoint character being a non-human who, as a "chronicler," is largely tasked with observing). But this is definitely not like anything I've ever read before and experience like that is always incredible.

The Women by Kristin Hannah

dark emotional sad slow-paced

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

2.75

This is rough read and that isn't helped by the book being longer than it probably should be. I get the capital "I" importance of this book but it feels like the author really wanted to pile absolutely everything onto her main character and it leads to what could and should be a relatable story of struggle into an exercise in melodrama. I blame a lot of that on Frankie's various love affairs, which rocket back and forth from tragic to tawdry. For a book title The Women, and attempting to highlight those that served in Vietnam but whose service was often overlooked and forgotten, I just wish there was more focus on her time with her fellow women than on the men in her life. There are a few moments in the book where this is true, but it often feels very brief and superficial—like little positive speed bumps in her intensely depressing story.

I also question whether Frankie is the most ideal character for this story. As the daughter of a well-to-do family, her experience is so very different from a lot of people who go to war and struggle on the return. For all the hardships she goes through, she has an immense series of safety nets and support systems that she can fall back on (e.g., she's never at risk of ending up on the streets, like so many vets have). The purpose of this seems to be to emphasize how ostracized she is when she comes home to a community that doesn't even seem to know or care that there's a war on, but when you compare that to her fellow veteran Barb, a Black woman whose brother was killed protesting the war...it just seems like an odd choice for the voice of this story.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Spike-A Dark Place by Sierra Hahn, Scott Allie, Victor Gischler

adventurous funny medium-paced

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

3.0

Look, it's always fun to spend time with Spike and his sojourn in space with a bunch of human-sized bugs was one of the big swings from the Buffy comics run that is both something that would have not looked great on TV, but was also quite delightful in a comic. That said, I feel like the bugs were the real highlight of this book (they certainly felt like they went on a more significant arc), as opposed to Spike doing his usual moping over Buffy with an added femme fatale succubus for a little spice (she was okay, if a little one-note).

Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

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

2.0

I had a really hard time with this book. Some of that I attribute to timing. This setting is very nearly at Handmaid's Tale levels of bleak in a way that I was not prepared for and probably made it a bad choice to read in mid-November 2024. However, I had a lot of other problems with the book outside of feeling that this wasn't the right time to read it. 

Chiefly, the main character was really tough for me to follow. As a queer person, I can surely sympathize with a queer character stuck in a society that won't let her love who she wants to, but this girl is constantly making waves as if she's not going to get herself and those she loves murdered, even as she's seeing people suffer grave consequences for this kind of behavior. It makes her come off as not very bright and dangerously impulsive. The mystery elements often contributed to my feeling like Sophia was always a step behind. There were several moments where I figured out where the story was going long before she did and she'd be stamping her feet, upset that she and her companions weren't getting things done and I just wanted to reach through the book, shake her and say, "girl, stop for a moment and think, you have the answers right in front of you!"

And then after all of that, I found the conclusion very pollyannaish in an incredibly satisfying way. The intense patriarchal setting is so entrenched and the characters, themselves, comment on how difficult it will be to undo all of that and then...they just do. It strains credibility and that's in a world filled with magic and curses.