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its_kievan's reviews
157 reviews
Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
I say with complete sincerity, Between Two Fires is probably one of the most compelling and profound explorations of faith that I have ever read. And definitely the only one where a knight fights a river monster and gets groped by a corpse.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Body horror, Gore, and Vomit
Minor: Homophobia, Rape, and Child abuse
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
Underwhelming. I don’t really care about Poirot, either as a person or as a detective. The only time he was at all interesting was his brief debate with Ferguson about art, otherwise he was just there to deliver plot points. In fact, all of the characters were fairly weak - a far cry from the far superior And Then There Were None. Appropriately enough, given the setting, this feels like a 1930s holiday read and nothing more.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Gun violence and Infidelity
Minor: Racism
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
About 150 pages of the best political writing that I've ever read. Unfortunately, it's buried beneath another 350 pages of mind-numbing nonsense about What It All Means and an insanely tedious romance between a rambling sociopath and a woman who's hit so hard by the Madonna-whore complex that it feels like satire. So, y'know, mixed feelings.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism and Racial slurs
Minor: Gun violence
Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
A fantastically interesting first 2/3rds let down by an overdeveloped ending. Muir’s choice to split the narrative between a present-day second-person(!) POV and a warped retelling of the previous book is a bonkers one, and I am insanely impressed that she pulled it off so well. All that goes to shit, however, when she explains too much and not enough, filling up far too many pages with monologues that never quite make sense. Particularly annoying are the wildly underdeveloped Blood of Eden and the godawful already-outdated meme speak. I really wanted to love this book, and for a while I thought I did, but sadly this might be my last Locked Tomb experience.
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew by Bart D. Ehrman
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
2.0
There’s a lot of interesting stuff buried in this book, but god is it hidden beneath a mountain of very uninteresting stuff. That’s a little bit my fault: I’ve been on a real early Christianity kick lately so a lot of things that would otherwise be surprising - Gnostics, forged Scripture, Paul being a dick - were old news to me. But the bigger problem is Ehrman’s writing, which is so endlessly repetitive that I could feel my brain wilt. Credit where credit’s sue, it’s not academic or jargon-y, but he goes too far in the other direction and takes a single idea and goes over and over it until it’s driven into the dust. Again, they’re fascinating ideas, and despite everything I think anyone who’s interested in the history of Christianity should check this book out - but I’m so happy I never have to read it again.
Content Warnings
Minor: Antisemitism
Adjustment Day by Chuck Palahniuk
challenging
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.0
At one point in this story, one character injects another character's penis with spider venom, which causes it to rot and eventually fall off. This is a good analogy for Adjustment Day as a whole, except replace the penis with my attention span and the spider venom with one of the most toothless, incoherent attempts at satire I've ever read. It's just... it's bad. It's bad and it's not particularly clever or interesting. Good satire comes from caring about the subject, at least a little. You need to know a lot about something to criticize it well, and that's doubly true when you're trying to be funny in the process. Palahniuk, as far as I can tell, doesn't really give a shit about... well, about anything, and it shows. Adjustment Day is the sort of equal-opportunity mockery that you'd find on South Park, and as a result it reads like a high school student's report on a book they didn't even read. It's lazy, and it's boring. I'm sure somewhere there's an Adjustment Day fan - probably the same person whose response to Fight Club was "whoa dude that's so sick" - but personally I couldn't care less. I couldn't care less what Palahniuk thinks about masculinity, or about liberalism, or about identity politics, and I couldn't care less about his book.
Also he has two characters in this book talk about Fight Club, which is so blindingly obnoxious it nearly killed me.
Also he has two characters in this book talk about Fight Club, which is so blindingly obnoxious it nearly killed me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture, Violence, Gun violence, and Gore
Moderate: Racial slurs, Racism, Homophobia, and Misogyny
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
Very much an investigative piece, in comparison to Say Nothing’s focus on storytelling. There’s a lot of technical ability on display, as Keefe covers three generations of millionaires and the opioid epidemic in under 500 pages without missing a beat. The book does lose something in the process, though I couldn’t say exactly what that is. Maybe it’s the fact that it feels less like a complete book and more like a very long newspaper article. I don’t know. Regardless, it is definitely required reading on the poisonous relationship between wealth and power, and the sheer horror that can be created by people whose only passion is their own bottom line.
I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
challenging
dark
emotional
fast-paced
4.0
Affected me way more than I was expecting it to. McCurdy strikes an amazing balance between laying out the harrowing details of her trauma and showing how she spent so long not recognising it as trauma. I’m also very glad her Mom died.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Eating disorder, Addiction, Vomit, and Sexual assault
Moderate: Cancer and Sexual content
Minor: Sexism and Homophobia
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-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
4.0
Absolutely fascinating to read. McCarthy strips his writing down to the absolute bare minimum (minus even dialogue marks) needed to keep the story going, to the point where Bell’s chapter-opening monologues feel breathlessly tense. I haven’t read anything like it (except maybe Hammett) and while it does take a lot of getting used to, it also perfectly fits the dry, wide-open setting. I almost wish I had a literature degree because I can feel all the subtext and allusions and deeper meanings I’m missing out on.
As a long-time SFF reader, I’m used to people going on tirades about how SFF books should be taken as seriously as “classic” literature, and I think this is a perfect counter argument. Even the best fantasy book left my head after an hour or so. No Country For Old Men is going to be rattling around in my brain for a long, long time to come.
As a long-time SFF reader, I’m used to people going on tirades about how SFF books should be taken as seriously as “classic” literature, and I think this is a perfect counter argument. Even the best fantasy book left my head after an hour or so. No Country For Old Men is going to be rattling around in my brain for a long, long time to come.
A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark
adventurous
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
A fun read to close out the year, but not the book I was hoping it would be.
The problem is that the setting and plot are almost entirely separate, which is a real tragedy when the setting - alternate 1910s Cairo with djinns and angels - is so damn cool. Clark wants to have his cake and eat it too, and so he ends up with an interesting backdrop that never actually matters to the story. He tells us that sexism is more-or-less at 1910s levels, but at no point does anyone treat Fatma differently because of her gender - not in any way that affects the plot, at least. He tells us that homophobia is the same, and yet not only can Fatma go around in men's clothing but multiple characters know about her and Siti and no one even bats an eye. I get if you don't want to interrupt your fun adventure story with real-world bigotry, that's so incredibly fair, but in that case why even bring it up? Just be like yeah the djinns made us chill with gay women and leave it at that. The same is true of the fact that it's set in Cairo, and more broadly in the Middle East. Again, the food and clothes and architecture is interesting, but it's just set dressing - you could change Fatma's name to Faith and the djinns to ghosts (or whatever) and it fundamentally wouldn't change anything.
I want to make it clear, I still enjoyed this book. The reason I bothered writing all this is because I enjoyed the book enough to care about how it handled its setting. Clark is clearly a creative dude, and I I'm very excited to see what he puts out next.
The problem is that the setting and plot are almost entirely separate, which is a real tragedy when the setting - alternate 1910s Cairo with djinns and angels - is so damn cool. Clark wants to have his cake and eat it too, and so he ends up with an interesting backdrop that never actually matters to the story. He tells us that sexism is more-or-less at 1910s levels, but at no point does anyone treat Fatma differently because of her gender - not in any way that affects the plot, at least. He tells us that homophobia is the same, and yet not only can Fatma go around in men's clothing but multiple characters know about her and Siti and no one even bats an eye. I get if you don't want to interrupt your fun adventure story with real-world bigotry, that's so incredibly fair, but in that case why even bring it up? Just be like yeah the djinns made us chill with gay women and leave it at that. The same is true of the fact that it's set in Cairo, and more broadly in the Middle East. Again, the food and clothes and architecture is interesting, but it's just set dressing - you could change Fatma's name to Faith and the djinns to ghosts (or whatever) and it fundamentally wouldn't change anything.
I want to make it clear, I still enjoyed this book. The reason I bothered writing all this is because I enjoyed the book enough to care about how it handled its setting. Clark is clearly a creative dude, and I I'm very excited to see what he puts out next.