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kentanapages's reviews
555 reviews
The Blighted Stars by Megan E. O'Keefe
adventurous
challenging
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
dying planets, extreme capitalism and monopolization of resources and power. rebels risking it all to fight for change. dangerous yet powerful technology. some serious family drama. sentient ai. sentient fungi. adorable emotional support robots. queernorm world.
“It is the dark between the stars that lets them shine”
The Blighted Stars is an engaging, action-packed space opera with deeply human characters, cool use of technology and science, body horror and and some of the best flirtatious banter I’ve read in a while. It’s also a commentary on capitalism, privilege, access, and environmental sustainability. I found the second half a bit draggy and also a bit inconsistent with the science and tech, but by that point I was invested, and the dialogue and character nuance kept me coming back.
5 ruling families control what’s left of humanity and the known universe. Earth has been destroyed. Humans have developed a technology to create neural maps and download them into printed bodies, or prints. A newly discovered mineral called relkatite powers this printing process and enables humanity to survive this way, but the mining process has a side effect that may be much worse than anyone realizes, and may be destroying earth-like worlds. Are humans willing to destroy the remaining habitable worlds to let them keep this technology? Is their drive to continue mining really their own, or are they being influenced by someone or something?
Things I loved:
--trans main character and queernorm world. In this future universe, humans have invented a technology that allows them to map their brains and upload into a “printed” (fabricated) body. Our main character Tarquin was a male born in a body that didn’t feel quite right, and because his family had money, he was able to be mapped and printed into a body that felt more like himself at a young age. In fact, all types of body dysmorphia or even just personal preference can be addressed this way, with people having “preferred prints” that feel right to them–as long as they can afford it. Future capitalism is just as dystopian as, well, current capitalism.
--cool technology and science. The first half of the book does an especially good job of introducing cool technologies, such as neural mapping and printing of bodies, pathways, or enhancements built into these “prints” to increase mental or physical abilities, mining technology and a mineral called Relkalite, sentient fungus, body armor that molds to your shape, a geology bot that doubles as an emotional support / anxiety support robot named Pliny the Metal.
--Pliny the Metal <3 calling this little bot out separately because I loved it so much.
--The dynamic between our two main characters, Tarquin and Naira. For me, the romantic subplot is usually secondary, and sometimes even a distraction for me. I'm lukewarm on really cutesy romances. In this case, it was just fun, and I found myself rooting for these two and laughing out loud, even when it bordered on cheesy. I totally fell for the banter, and it was just so well executed and enjoyable that I was emotionally invested before I realized it.
--Badass ladies!
--Open-minded, thoughtful characters willing to grow and learn
Things I didn’t love as much:
--The second half felt longer than it needed to be, and at the same time it felt like some big jumps in logic that were used to forward the plot but felt less natural or sensical than the very scientific approach laid out previously. I enjoy when a true scientific approach is taken in SFF, so when it was replaced by characters leaping to conclusions that would not actually be obvious or scientific given the information they should have at that time, it was a bit abrupt and disappointing to me. The world building was also great in the beginning, and seemed to shift more into “telling” than “showing” by the second half.
--I would have loved to see more of the sentient AI in the ship, and felt that was really superficially touched on, and not explained as well as I would have liked. Short story on just this character please :D
-THE ENDING. To be clear, I didn’t dislike how the book ended, although it was a bit heartbreaking; but I feel that it’s very unfair to be left on this ending without a date for the next book 😂 I'm going to be anxiously worrying about these 2 until then!
Overall I really enjoyed this, and I’ll be on the lookout for the rest of the series!
"WE CAN NEVER LEAVE"
“It is the dark between the stars that lets them shine”
The Blighted Stars is an engaging, action-packed space opera with deeply human characters, cool use of technology and science, body horror and and some of the best flirtatious banter I’ve read in a while. It’s also a commentary on capitalism, privilege, access, and environmental sustainability. I found the second half a bit draggy and also a bit inconsistent with the science and tech, but by that point I was invested, and the dialogue and character nuance kept me coming back.
5 ruling families control what’s left of humanity and the known universe. Earth has been destroyed. Humans have developed a technology to create neural maps and download them into printed bodies, or prints. A newly discovered mineral called relkatite powers this printing process and enables humanity to survive this way, but the mining process has a side effect that may be much worse than anyone realizes, and may be destroying earth-like worlds. Are humans willing to destroy the remaining habitable worlds to let them keep this technology? Is their drive to continue mining really their own, or are they being influenced by someone or something?
Things I loved:
--trans main character and queernorm world. In this future universe, humans have invented a technology that allows them to map their brains and upload into a “printed” (fabricated) body. Our main character Tarquin was a male born in a body that didn’t feel quite right, and because his family had money, he was able to be mapped and printed into a body that felt more like himself at a young age. In fact, all types of body dysmorphia or even just personal preference can be addressed this way, with people having “preferred prints” that feel right to them–as long as they can afford it. Future capitalism is just as dystopian as, well, current capitalism.
--cool technology and science. The first half of the book does an especially good job of introducing cool technologies, such as neural mapping and printing of bodies, pathways, or enhancements built into these “prints” to increase mental or physical abilities, mining technology and a mineral called Relkalite, sentient fungus, body armor that molds to your shape, a geology bot that doubles as an emotional support / anxiety support robot named Pliny the Metal.
--Pliny the Metal <3 calling this little bot out separately because I loved it so much.
--The dynamic between our two main characters, Tarquin and Naira. For me, the romantic subplot is usually secondary, and sometimes even a distraction for me. I'm lukewarm on really cutesy romances. In this case, it was just fun, and I found myself rooting for these two and laughing out loud, even when it bordered on cheesy. I totally fell for the banter, and it was just so well executed and enjoyable that I was emotionally invested before I realized it.
--Badass ladies!
--Open-minded, thoughtful characters willing to grow and learn
Things I didn’t love as much:
--The second half felt longer than it needed to be, and at the same time it felt like some big jumps in logic that were used to forward the plot but felt less natural or sensical than the very scientific approach laid out previously. I enjoy when a true scientific approach is taken in SFF, so when it was replaced by characters leaping to conclusions that would not actually be obvious or scientific given the information they should have at that time, it was a bit abrupt and disappointing to me. The world building was also great in the beginning, and seemed to shift more into “telling” than “showing” by the second half.
--I would have loved to see more of the sentient AI in the ship, and felt that was really superficially touched on, and not explained as well as I would have liked. Short story on just this character please :D
-THE ENDING. To be clear, I didn’t dislike how the book ended, although it was a bit heartbreaking; but I feel that it’s very unfair to be left on this ending without a date for the next book 😂 I'm going to be anxiously worrying about these 2 until then!
Overall I really enjoyed this, and I’ll be on the lookout for the rest of the series!
"WE CAN NEVER LEAVE"
Home Is Not a Country by Safia Elhillo
5.0
This was incredible. Magical. Achingly beautiful. Will make you cry. Read asap.
The Complete Works by Michel de Montaigne
Did not finish book. Stopped at 30%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 30%.
I’ll finish it eventually !
Firewalkers by Adrian Tchaikovsky
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.75
Weird cool gritty dystopian story, audio did a great job with the accents and dialects, but sometimes I had trouble identifying specific characters. Really liked the audio & ebook combo for that reason. I’m a little less into the climate disaster wasteland dystopian horrors (maybe because it’s a little too real feeling, but this was well done and I have a huge soft spot for an AI character gaining sentience 💜💜
Permafrost by Eva Baltasar
5.0
Permafrost reads like a poetic memoir crossed with a darkly humored observational on humans and society and living.
The translation by Julia Sanches is art in itself; I actually just ordered this in the Spanish translation to compare (I can not read Catalan to any useful degree), because I am so deeply drawn to the words and the feeling behind them. You can sense how lovingly this was translated.
I love the short chapters, which read like vignettes. I love the piercing sadness that fuels the wickedly funny humor, and the wry self awareness. This story revolves around thoughts of and partial attempts at suicide, yet somehow thrums with hope and made me feel a sense of connection to the narrator, to the author, to humanity.
The back cover says: “Permafrost’s no-bullshit lesbian narrator is an uninhibited lover and a wickedly funny observer of modern life… It is a breathtakingly forthright call for women’s freedom to embrace both pleasure and solitude, and speaks boldly of the body, of sex, and of the self.”
The author’s dedication says, ‘To poetry, for permitting it.’
I went to the bookstore to buy Boulder by Eva Baltasar, but they only had Permafrost, her debut novel, and technically the first in a trilogy (that apparently do not need to be read in order; after reading only the first, I can mostly confirm this).
I picked out the perfect color tab and am planning on going back through and tabbing all of my favorite quotes, of which there were many, this coming weekend.
I can’t wait to read Boulder, the next book in this loose trilogy, also translated by Julia Sanches. It was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, and if it’s anything like Permafrost I’m going to love it.
The translation by Julia Sanches is art in itself; I actually just ordered this in the Spanish translation to compare (I can not read Catalan to any useful degree), because I am so deeply drawn to the words and the feeling behind them. You can sense how lovingly this was translated.
I love the short chapters, which read like vignettes. I love the piercing sadness that fuels the wickedly funny humor, and the wry self awareness. This story revolves around thoughts of and partial attempts at suicide, yet somehow thrums with hope and made me feel a sense of connection to the narrator, to the author, to humanity.
The back cover says: “Permafrost’s no-bullshit lesbian narrator is an uninhibited lover and a wickedly funny observer of modern life… It is a breathtakingly forthright call for women’s freedom to embrace both pleasure and solitude, and speaks boldly of the body, of sex, and of the self.”
The author’s dedication says, ‘To poetry, for permitting it.’
I went to the bookstore to buy Boulder by Eva Baltasar, but they only had Permafrost, her debut novel, and technically the first in a trilogy (that apparently do not need to be read in order; after reading only the first, I can mostly confirm this).
I picked out the perfect color tab and am planning on going back through and tabbing all of my favorite quotes, of which there were many, this coming weekend.
I can’t wait to read Boulder, the next book in this loose trilogy, also translated by Julia Sanches. It was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, and if it’s anything like Permafrost I’m going to love it.
Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea by Rita Chang-Eppig
I'm so glad I read this. It's not what I expected, but it's what I needed.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.5
Thank you NetGalley and Bloomsbury for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!
Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea is an adventurous historical fiction account of Shek Yeung, better known to the histories as “Ching-Yi Sao” or “Zheng Yi Sao,” a legendary pirate queen, 'The Scourge of the South China Sea'.
This is not a pretty tale, yet it’s a beautiful one, a gritty human kind of beautiful. We meet Shek Yeung just after her husband, commander of a pirate fleet, has been mortally wounded. We learn that they have been partners, each running half of the fleet; that a trust has grown between them, that she has fought daily to earn and keep that trust. We see her internal conflict over being grateful for that trust, somehow caring for this man, despite the fact that he purchased her to be his wife from a flower boat, that she had ended up there after being abducted by pirates and sold into sex work years before. She is his partner, she is his wife, she is also his property. The respect she has earned in the fleet has also been granted to her because of him, and now she must figure out how to move forward, how to keep her half of the fleet and her tenuous position, when another younger man is the named successor.
As a work of historical fiction this is fascinating, and I loved learning about early 19th Century pirates and politics and colonialist powers in and around the South China Sea. I enjoyed that the plot doesn’t build to some incredible end, because it’s loosely following a real historical set of events, and the point of it isn’t that story arc. The point of it is Shek Yeung herself.
What I truly loved this novel for is not the history, not the plot. It’s the compelling female perspective, the commentary and discourse on society and roles within it, the examination of gender and empire and capitalism and colonial oppression and patriarchal oppression and power. I love how we are shown Shek Yeung’s perspective as a female in this world, and how self aware and honest and devastating and f*&%ing relatable it is. I highlighted so many quotes, and out of context they could be commentary on our world today, on a hundred other societies and points in history, on this bloody struggle women+ and non-males and non-ruling-class persons have continued to battle decade after decade, century after century. I love that the author, through Shek Yeung’s thoughts and observations, never shies away from reality, from the way the world is, how it’s different for different genders, for different peoples.
What I truly loved this novel for is not the history, not the plot. It’s the compelling female perspective, the commentary and discourse on society and roles within it, the examination of gender and empire and capitalism and colonial oppression and patriarchal oppression and power. I love how we are shown Shek Yeung’s perspective as a female in this world, and how self aware and honest and devastating and f*&%ing relatable it is. I highlighted so many quotes, and out of context they could be commentary on our world today, on a hundred other societies and points in history, on this bloody struggle women+ and non-males and non-ruling-class persons have continued to battle decade after decade, century after century. I love that the author, through Shek Yeung’s thoughts and observations, never shies away from reality, from the way the world is, how it’s different for different genders, for different peoples.
Shek Yeung grapples with survival, with womanhood, with freedom, with personhood, with power, with want, with meaning in life. She observes how everything is impacted by societal social constructs, how these expectations and roles permeate and bind us, and internally she questions these things, she chafes at these things. Externally she does what she must to survive.
There are SO MANY quotes I highlighted and took note of and can’t wait to share. I want to be respectful of not posting these before the publishing date, in case anything changes, as I’m reading an Advanced Copy. After May 30th I’ll update this review with some of those quotes. For now here are some notes and themes:
- Women are deemed unworthy of power until a man decides otherwise; power is given to women by powerful men, granted to them, and this can be so easily taken away. (This is part of why I hate the word empowered.)
- Women are seen as inferior, as lesser than men, because of lesser physical strength (on average), and in no small part due to the debilitating act of childbirth.
- Women have to show they can do anything a man can do, constantly prove themselves to be as tough as the man, but they also have to do more, because they are also expected to be women, to be able to turn that womanhood on and off as needed, to “save” men when needed.
- Childbirth is a risk but also one of the only bargaining chips for power a woman has.
I'm so glad I read this. It's not what I expected, but it's what I needed.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence and Colonisation
Moderate: Rape and Slavery
Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
5.0
Beautiful, profound, poetic, raw. I did the audiobook and loved it, but there were so many parts I want to reread, that I am buying the physical book. I definitely recommend starting with the audiobook and hearing it that way though!
"Sub-subtext: we are SO American we believe our college degrees have nothing to do with skills and salaries; this is our privilege."
"...we take note of the many hospitals and schools named after people whose life missions they believed were to uplift savage nations. Understand, in a way we hadn't realized before, we are the descendents of these so-called savage people. Colonized, forever changed, but still here."
"We do not view these sites and tastes and histories as contradictory, inconsistent. Brown girls, brown girls, brown girls who, in their bones, are beginning to understand that they are the sum of many identities, many histories at once. The colonized, the colonizers. Where do we fall?"
"Here are the registers where people were forced to change their names to Spanish, English, French, Dutch ones. Santos, Diaz, James, Roberts.... here are the churches where natives were told to convert. Here are the red light districts that have sprung up beside naval bases--supply and demand, you know?"
"Here are the call centers where, even though Americans get angry because they claim they can't understand the workers' accents, the workers say they're still grateful to make nine dollars an hour; that's a fortune here."
"We leave. We leave, we leave. We always leave. It is in our blood to leave. But perhaps it's also in our blood to return. Why did we ever believe home could only be one place, when existing in these bodies means holding many worlds within us? At last, we see."
"What you're saying is unnatural, unwomanly. Are you that selfish? Because isn't childbirth what we've all been taught to aspire to? 'Raise a famiy in the image of yourself--oops! God.' 'Your life will change completely when you have kids.' 'You will never know true love until you become a parent.' Or so we've been told."
"Sub-subtext: we are SO American we believe our college degrees have nothing to do with skills and salaries; this is our privilege."
"...we take note of the many hospitals and schools named after people whose life missions they believed were to uplift savage nations. Understand, in a way we hadn't realized before, we are the descendents of these so-called savage people. Colonized, forever changed, but still here."
"We do not view these sites and tastes and histories as contradictory, inconsistent. Brown girls, brown girls, brown girls who, in their bones, are beginning to understand that they are the sum of many identities, many histories at once. The colonized, the colonizers. Where do we fall?"
"Here are the registers where people were forced to change their names to Spanish, English, French, Dutch ones. Santos, Diaz, James, Roberts.... here are the churches where natives were told to convert. Here are the red light districts that have sprung up beside naval bases--supply and demand, you know?"
"Here are the call centers where, even though Americans get angry because they claim they can't understand the workers' accents, the workers say they're still grateful to make nine dollars an hour; that's a fortune here."
"We leave. We leave, we leave. We always leave. It is in our blood to leave. But perhaps it's also in our blood to return. Why did we ever believe home could only be one place, when existing in these bodies means holding many worlds within us? At last, we see."
"What you're saying is unnatural, unwomanly. Are you that selfish? Because isn't childbirth what we've all been taught to aspire to? 'Raise a famiy in the image of yourself--oops! God.' 'Your life will change completely when you have kids.' 'You will never know true love until you become a parent.' Or so we've been told."