limabeans's reviews
58 reviews

dark hopeful tense 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

5.0

Wow, where to even start.

Every aspect of this was written phenomenally. It’s obvious Danya Kukafka feels greatly about the issues in this book and honestly just everything she hits in this book was done exceptionally well.

This is not a story about a serial killer; this is the story about the women and what they are or could have been because of Ansel’s actions.

Kukafka writes this story in a way that makes the reader realize they too have fallen victim to the remorse towards and glorification, no matter the morals towards him, of a serial killer. I think writing Ansel’s 2019 POV in second person is a great strategy that helped with that. But it shows that people just like us try to find a reason to find guilty men innocent in some way— and that we are fascinated by these vicious men and don’t justify the women who are victims, and those that are affected by this violence that do survive.

I truly do think this story will stick to me forever.

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If Cats Disappeared From The World by Genki Kawamura

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emotional inspiring reflective fast-paced

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

2.5

This book let me down. I did feel the translation was weird and off, but after reading far enough into the book you can recognize that’s not the main problem. The characters are cliché and the protagonist was pretty selfish. I find the little funny/quirky moments were very annoying and made me find parts of the story insufferable.

The devil being this quirky guy who just laughed and wore stupid shirts while obviously trying to appear as this comedic relief in this grief story…very annoying

. It did not fit the vibe of the book at all.

One thing I did like about this story was it focused on the acceptance of life when facing death, and not trying to find a grand or explicit ‘purpose’ for why you live. It was a compelling concept to read about.

Overall this book was, honestly, just frustrating.

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The Six Deaths of the Saint by Alix E. Harrow

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challenging dark reflective fast-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

Beautiful story. Really. It was only 30 or so pages but it hit so many different concepts of society and individual identities. Very reflective and bittersweet. Really questions what we give up with devotion and what we gain from liberty.

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The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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challenging dark reflective fast-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

It did what it was supposed to. Hard to evoke much emotion when it is only around 60 pages, but I do think this story is a good symbolic representation of treatment towards women’s mental health in the late 1800s.

I read something about how receiving this kind of treatment back then was a luxury— and it is very interesting. Despite the obvious ineffectiveness of this isolation resting cure in this story most women would never be put in this situation to try for treatment. I just think both of these sides go to show the deterioration of women’s mental health during this era of time and that this ‘intervention’ really didn’t work much better than not having any. But, just a thought.

I also listened to this on audio book because it was very easily accessible that way. Maybe would have enjoyed it more physically reading.

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Babel by R.F. Kuang

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challenging informative tense slow-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

4.5

To start off, this story was phenomenally written and was able to beautifully portray heavy and uncomfortable topics in an intriguing way.

R.F. Kuang’s true dedication to this lengthy amount of research definitely shows in the novel. She’s able to accurately and appropriately portray loads of translations (especially with the match pairs), literature, and other cultural work. The blurbs at the bottom of pages were a very helpful touch.

This book is of course more than just the loss of concepts between translation; I would even argue that it’s not even as important compared to what else Babel contains. Kuang dives into imperialism, colonialism, identity confusion, one’s own roots, and so much more. And it ties the role of academia into all of this, which is tremendously hard to do.

My favorite aspect was probably how Kuang portrayed Robin’s struggle of personal fortunes versus greater cause.

We can see this with Letty who doesn’t understand why the other three in their cohort would throw away all they have for something that would not directly affect them. I think this was done so well because we are all just human at the end of the day— originally Robin didn’t want to throw away his perfect, academic life for the Hermes society despite knowing how fucked up it was to have what he had and how we had gotten their from Richard.

I also believe it’s extremely hard to write a character change in this context with as harsh as issues that Robin had. It was masterfully done. (not that Victoire and Ramy weren’t facing this [duh], but they didn’t have nearly the same amount of internal conflict leading to their change as Robin did.)

There were some flaws. The introduction of the magic with the silver working math pairs was a fascinating concept yet it was barely touched upon. Not that a fantasy book has to be filled with magic, but more use of this honestly innovative idea would have been nice.

I also wish more little things. Like much more time was spent in Canton or revolved more around it. That the cohort characters weren’t relatively flat for half the story. But not much to complain about.

It is hard because there’s so much hype around Babel. I do not find this story to have ‘unaware, groundbreaking’ concepts as I have been told or have seen from outside sources. (I try not to let media get in the way of biasing my own opinion though.) But it was definitely a book I will continue to think about and reflect upon; it truly was an excellent read and I’m very impressed by Kuang’s research and writing.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anybody. Seriously, I think everybody should read this book at some point regardless of genre or writing preferences.

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