lizshayne's reviews
2094 reviews

The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi

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adventurous dark emotional sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? N/A
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

This novella absolutely has short story energy and it’s one of those things that lives in the dreamscape between fable and fairy tale and fantasy. It was lovely and painful in the way such stories ought to be. 
Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings

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adventurous emotional tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I love a good space opera. There's war, peace, wibbly wobbly timey wimey ness, Han Solo redemption arc, weird science. You name it, it's basically in here.
And Hutchings uses the tropes of space opera in her blender to build a story that feels really fun and enjoyable to ride along with even as you know where it's going because that's not the secret. The story is how they get there against all odds. Because it always is. That's space opera.
Endangered Eating: America's Vanishing Foods by Sarah Lohman

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emotional hopeful informative sad medium-paced

4.0

I love Sarah Lohman's writing and I love food and I love its history and I should have gone into this knowing it was going to be sad because OF COURSE a history of endangered food in the US is also going to be a history of genocide and enslavement and poor choices in the name of maximizing profit.

The depressing point that food probably tasted better before we started selectively breeding for "things that can be shipped across the coutnry" over "taste" is particularly frustrating.

And the fact that Lohman manages to come out holding all those nuances and making me feel, more than anything else, hungry for finding new and interesting heirloom foods was the best part.
Best Laid Plaids by Ella Stainton

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emotional mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

I have basically two critiques of this book (and it's almost entirely a reflection of being spoiled by two specific romance authors).
1) The sex to plot ratio was off. I wanted more about the ghosts. How was that not the most interesting thing happening??
2) So much of the conflict that drove this book could have been resolved by people opening their mouths and saying words to one another.
I could have handled 1, but 2 drives me bonkers. Which is irritating because the bones of the story of two nerds making their respective fields of study into a home would have been lovely. I just...ugh. Why must everything annoy me?
Having said that, the pun in the title was hilarious and Cornell Collins slayed at the narration, as always.
Meru by S.B. Divya

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

3.5

I was really in the mood for a good space opera and that is exactly what this book delivered. Also the plot was kind of gonzo and things I expected to happen at the end of the book appeared around the middle third and it was just a fun ride, albeit one that was not entirely evenly paced.

One of the things I found super interesting about the background of the world is the invention of disorders - AAD (ambition and acquisitiveness disorder), which is only bad when humans have it and it really points out the way that cultures pathologize the things they don't like. It's an invitation to think about which of our current disorders are "inconvenience to those in charge" disorders even as the reality - both in the text and outside of it - is more complicated. You can see the way that Divya is thinking about societies and how they evolve and where we might go one day. There's so much to unpack in the background even as the story of humanity growing up, again, plays out in the foreground. I do really appreciate SF stories that are also about "if I could have any society, what might it be interesting to see"?
The Guncle by Steven Rowley

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dark emotional funny reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I...made the mistake of starting this book during our weeklong intensive on Jewish law and medical ethics around end of life questions so that was a bit too much death to read a book about grief and loss.
Once that was done, however, I found it much easier to get into this and it was exactly as charming and delightful and quietly sad as advertised and Steven Rowley's narration was excellent.
Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale

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emotional hopeful reflective sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This was really cute (although I have SO many questions for the people who tagged this science fiction because then give me those sweet meltdown time travel powers, well, yesterday).

I really appreciated the depiction of an autistic woman and I loved watching the story evolve from the story of her fixing things to the story of finding a way into feeling less broken. It's...basically a love story of an autistic woman learning to love herself.

And I kind of couldn't believe the ending except that, the second I read it, I realized it was very much what it ought to have been.
Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Moreno-Garcia writes such good horror and her extremely down to earth style coupled with absolutely glorious characters and exactly the right kind of scary means I will basically read anything she writes now. 
And her brilliant, stubborn, heroines are just so much fun. 
A Darkness At The Door by Intisar Khanani

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adventurous emotional hopeful medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

I was very pleasantly surprised by this book. I’ll admit to a little trepidation when I first started because I was coming off a ya novel that I spent most of my reading being increasingly irritated at the main characters and this was very much the opposite. 
First of all, they got to be smart. Despite their age, they got to be clever and ruthless and take risks even as they took them seriously. 
Also Khanani was careful to explain her heroine’s choices in a way that made them make complete sense. I went back on some of my earlier assumptions about Rae because of how carefully Khanani walked us through her thought processes later and that doesn’t usually happen. 
The other thing I was fascinated by in this book is Rae’s attitude towards violence. The thesis of this book is that those who exploit others deserve what is coming to them and I was impressed at how little time was spent…having feelings about it.  The book’s willingness to go hard on “thieves justice is better than no justice even if it’s crueler than the law” was really refreshing. I’m not sure I agree with it, but I liked that the book never tried to have it both ways by taking agency away from Rae. 
I also really appreciated Rae’s growth into her disabled body in a way that felt both real and important. 
Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure by Eli Clare

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emotional hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

5.0

This book was gorgeous and it was specifically Clare's approach to writing into complex situations where different experiences lead to different politics that made it so brilliant. His willingness to own both his own perspective and the way that it is jostled (his language) by being in community and longing for that jostling is so important. It's a model of what I want articulations of theory to be - an imbricated set of observations and experiences and values and people that build up to create the polity, not just a politics.
He's so good and so thoughtful and I want to read more things written with this level of compassion undergirded by values.