mesal's reviews
572 reviews

Sword Catcher by Cassandra Clare

2.5

Sex does not adult fiction make. What a significant number of young adult authors don't seem to realize when writing their first novel for adults is that such books require more than just descriptive sex scenes to distinguish themselves from those targeted at adolescent audiences. If you remove the sex scenes and general air of debauchery surrounding Conor and Kel's friend group from Sword Catcher, for example, you're left with what is essentially just another YA fantasy. This isn't to say that the characters themselves don't act their age: the main characters are definitely all twenty-three or above, and it shows in their occupations as well as (occasionally) in their relationships with other people. However, the plot lacks complexity; the worldbuilding is ever-present, oppressively so; the humor employed is childish and reminiscent of all the sarcastic teenagers Clare has written over the years; there are often moments of dialogue so unrealistic that you know immediately they were designed to be quoted widely on the internet; and every single character is somehow pretty and has impeccable fashion sense—and a wardrobe to match.

The plot doesn't make any sense. There's precious little of it to even make sense of, considering how much of the novel Clare has dedicated to worldbuilding and exposition. A mysterious criminal known as the Ragpicker King lives inside a building called the Black Mansion; everyone knows he lives here, including the authorities, and this is somehow normal.

Then we find out that nobody arrests him because he has a secret pact with the King of Castellane, whereby the King lets him conduct criminal activities in exchange for what is dubiously termed as "[making] sure that the kind of crime that does not threaten the King or the city is allowed to flourish." Despite the emphasis this novel places on describing every minute, unnecessary detail, this concept of threatening and unthreatening crimes somehow goes unexplained.

One of Lin's patients has a secret stash of items collected over the course of his travels. After handing the most important item over to her, he is killed by an unknown group of people that is never mentioned again, as if his sole purpose in the plot was to make convenient the process of Lin acquiring this item. A certain poison and its antidote are introduced in the third chapter, and of course the purpose of Chekhov's gun is to be fired. Kel put this poison to use in a manner that could have been fun if it wasn't rendered immediately useless by what he said right after.

The scene on its own was cool, with Kel eating first from a poisoned bowl so that Jerrod would eat from it too, then telling him he'd only get the antidote if he agreed to lead Kel to Prosper Beck. After Jerrod drank the antidote, though, he insinuated that he wouldn't keep his promise; then Kel gave a speech about how he'd have all of Jerrod's businesses shut down and his life ruined if he didn't comply.
“You could,” Jerrod said, “have just led with that.”
“But would that have been as much fun?”Jerrod's right: Kel
could have just led with that if it was enough to convince the other man, even though I personally don't think it should have been. Kel's use of the poison is not only worthless in the overall scene but also confuses the reader regarding Kel's personality, a point which deserves a paragraph of its own. Anyway, The Son of Neptune did it better.

Kel—whose name should have been Kell, really, considering his proper name is Kellian—is one of our two main characters, yet his characterization made little sense to me. We are told in the prologue that he loves reading, but after this assertion we don't see him open a single book for the duration of the novel. He focuses on protecting Conor in the most effective way possible without drawing attention to himself, except sometimes he doesn't do this and chooses instead the flashy, fun route to success, like in the poison scene mentioned above. He knows keeping secrets is a part of his job description, and yet he tells

Lin

stories of his earliest years as Sword Catcher, ending with a rueful "I shouldn't have told you that . . . It's probably a state secret."

The fact that Lin already knew of his position as Sword Catcher is irrelevant; it's difficult to believe that someone literally trained into a habit of keeping even the smallest secrets would talk of them so easily with someone who has only just learned of his real relationship with the Prince. If this happened after they'd known each other for a while, it would have been much more believable.

I liked Lin a lot and was open to liking Kel, too, but I never could make complete sense of him.

This new world Clare crafted was intriguing in some ways, shallow in others. I liked the portrayal of the Charter Families and their relationship with the Crown; I liked how much care went into adapting actual historical events for a magic-based fantasy setting to create the Ashkar. The same amount of care did not go into crafting other countries and peoples. We have a man named Anton Petrov, for example, who owns a samovar and tells Lin that the doctors in his own country called Nyenschantz would tell him to punch a bear to feel better if he were ill. There is no further development to his character. While usually there's nothing at all wrong with renaming real countries for a fantasy novel, I disliked the way these countries were haphazardly referenced and its people casually stereotyped; they were mentioned as if only to prove that they exist in this fictional world. So many other countries are also alluded to in this manner without serving any particular purpose, and this ties in with the complaint I have regarding infodumping: there's just so much of it. Kel tries to eat a cake in the shape of a phoenix, and the narrator butts in to tell the reader of the history behind the phoenix and other magical creatures disappearing from the world during the Sundering. Between each chapter we have to read this story-within-a-story of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon (but with slightly different names) that is also talked of within Lin's chapters, so we're forced to read it twice over. A lot of the information the reader is presented with could easily have been saved for the sequel; we don't need to know every single detail about your world in the first book itself.

This is probably a good time for me to clarify that I didn't think Sword Catcher was all that bad. It was just extremely average: I enjoyed certain parts of it and was curious to discover how events would unfold, but the predictability of the plot and the young adult-esque elements incorporated into the novel assured me that I wouldn't be interested in reading the next installment.

Buddy read with Yasna! 

Network Effect by Martha Wells

adventurous emotional funny reflective

• Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

I highlighted over half of this book, that's how invested I was in the relationship between ART and Murderbot. And Murderbot and Murderbot 2.0. And Murderbot 2.0 and SecUnit 3. Really, the character relationships Wells writes—between bots and humans both—are excellently crafted. 

Exit Strategy by Martha Wells

adventurous emotional funny fast-paced

4.5

Gurathin and Murderbot should have more scenes together, regardless of how Murderbot itself feels about that. 

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

adventurous funny fast-paced

4.0

A governor module-less SecUnit comparing everyone it meets to the deep space research vessel that watched its favorite shows with it is something that can be so personal. 

He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan

adventurous dark emotional 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? Yes

4.5

Buddy read with Fiore, Nucu, and Sarah!

It was better than its prequel. He Who Drowned the World starts off strong: after a cursory but indispensable recap of past events, it drops the reader straight into the middle of a face-off against two rebel leaders and their armies. This did away with one of the major gripes I had with She Who Became the Sun: the Zhu childhood chapter, though necessary to the development of her character, took me forever to get through.

Parker-Chan's ability to create and maintain idiosyncratic characters—rarely lovable, but endlessly fascinating—carried forward into the second and final installment of their duology. Of the characters whose perspectives were presented, the three most prominent were often at odds with each other, and yet I somehow found myself rooting for all three of them to achieve their goals at different points in the narrative. Zhu's desire to realize her fate and change a world hostile to her very existence had me rooting for her even through all the questionable decisions she made. Ouyang's increasingly desperate need for revenge was rendered so well on the page that I almost forgot his pain wasn't mine.

As for Wang Baoxiang, he deserves a paragraph to himself. I've always thought him to be beautiful and gorgeous and pretty and polite and perfect and noble and lovely and loyal and kind and magnificent and nice and funny and fabulous and fantastic and friendly and smart and sweet and special and attractive and spectacular and wonderful and amazing and cute and brilliant and excellent and splendid and outstanding and intelligent and incredible and important and impressive and entertaining and cheerful and caring and truthful and talented and adorable and stupendous and remarkable and marvelous and glamorous and generous and glorious and gracious and tremendous and courteous and honest and respectful and helpful and loving and supportive and fun and wise and cool and distinguished and clever and graceful and hot and sexy and tender and gentle and unique and astounding and encouraging and trustworthy and dependable and reliable and humble and terrific and cherishing and faithful and affectionate and resourceful and wholesome and joyful and stunning and luscious.

The writing style Parker-Chan has employed in both novels of this duology is decidedly dramatic in nature, and for the most part it works. When the characters are compelling enough to generate an emotional investment in the reader, intense and sentimental sentences serve to heighten their feelings. Sometimes the repetition got to be a bit too much, though. When it's already established that Zhu has a certain ends-justify-the-means outlook on both battle strategy and personal relationships, repeating the same in words rather than in actions diminishes the impact of scenes where Zhu actually does live up to her oft-stated personality. The character arc she went through, unlike those of her counterparts, was undermined by this same tendency to show rather than tell:

after several passages dedicated to how Zhu would give up anything for her fate, the reader is presented with several passages dedicated to how Zhu wonders whether it was worth giving everything up for her fate. Though her arc may make perfect sense, hingeing on Xu Da's death as a turning point to drastically change her perception of the future, its method of execution did not have the desired result—on me, at least

. What worked for the point of view of a melodramatic character like Baoxiang or a wretched, miserable one like Ouyang did not translate as well, in my opinion, to Zhu's chapters.

A certain aspect of the plot also bothered me a little.

General Zhang gave up a battle, his army, and a future on the throne for the sake of his son. Though by no means a reprehensible act, did no advisor whisper in his ear to try and save his son in any other manner? Did nobody dissuade him from giving everything up? Did he not so much as make an attempt to devise an alternate solution? Zhu faced a similar situation with Chen Youliang and Xu Da, and she tried her utmost to save both her brother and her future. Zhang's desire may have been less consuming than Zhu's, but I still find it difficult to believe that he made defeating him that easy. For a novel that deals with complex themes and issues deftly, I expected more complexity from the plot as well.

Still an excellent read, with a perfect ending.

Before She Sleeps by Bina Shah

dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.0

Clearly a reimagining of The Handmaid's Tale but for and about women from Muslim countries, Before She Sleeps envisions a dystopian future in which nuclear warfare, climate change, and an infertility epidemic have restructured society so that all women are expected to take multiple husbands and contribute to repopulation. A few women resist, of course, and escape to an underground network known as the Panah, where they "rebel" against the authoritarian government by providing the scarce service of intimacy sans sex to rich men in power, so that these men turn a blind eye to the existence of the Panah.

It was honestly just okay. While I liked the world and the direction Shah was trying to take, especially during the first half of the novel, in the second half things started falling apart. Characters kept making out-of-character decisions simply to further the plot, and there was more focus on the romance between Julien and Sabine than I felt there really needed to be. Contrary to other reviews of this book, though, I didn't mind the open ending, only certain aspects of the journey to it. 

The Scarlet Alchemist by Kylie Lee Baker

adventurous dark medium-paced

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

4.0

Thank you to Inkyard Press in association with NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this book. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This is the only YA novel I've read this year that I really liked. Set in an alternate version of the Chinese Tang dynasty, where alchemists have succeeded in unlocking the secret to eternal life, the novel follows Fan Zilan in her quest to become one of the revered Royal Alchemists at the court of Empress Wu Zetian. A stranger warns her off this course—says it's a terrible idea, and that she doesn't know the truth of what she's getting into—but Zilan ignores him, set on her course and certain it's the only route to success, fortune, and ensuring a stable future for her family.

This is also the only book I've ever read where I didn't mind the "beautiful girl thinks she's ugly" trope being used. Zilan is mixed race, half Han Chinese and half foreigner, and the traits she inherited from her runaway father make her stand out unfavorably amongst others her age. It doesn't help that her cousin Yufei, whom Zilan lives with and spends most of her time beside, is drop-dead gorgeous and with a line of suitors hoping for her hand in marriage. To me, this was a unique interpretation of the trope, making scenes where Zilan bemoans her terrible appearance bearable.

Plot, character, and worldbuilding all worked together to create an addicting narrative that I sped through, eager to discover what came next. A couple of twists may have been predictable, but the journey to them was well-written enough that I didn't mind at all. I've surprised myself by thinking this about young adult fiction, but I actually intend to pick up the sequel whenever its publication date rolls around. 

Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong

adventurous dark medium-paced

• Loveable characters? No

1.0

This retelling of <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> is excellent in the sense that it remains true to the principal facets of the original. Shakespeare's version is tedious, with needless jumps between points of view that prolong the narrative and make the audience feel as if the story will never end; Gong's version is much the same, though its monotony can be ascribed to her choice of omniscient narrator, strongly decelerating the story's progression with constant detours into worldbuilding and character exposition. Cleopatra's Antony is lackluster and frankly a little soulless when compared to the Antony of <i>Julius Caesar</i>; the sliver of personality that Anton is able to call his own is overshadowed at every turn by the narrator's insistence on reminding readers of his matchless body jumping ability and tragic backstory. The one major aspect where this novel deviates from the play that inspired it, really, is in the depiction of the relationship between our two focal characters. Cleopatra and Antony's obsessive codependence and shared passion are all but lost in these their modern counterparts, with Calla and Anton's love story sputtering to a start oddly in the middle of the book and remaining unconvincing through to the very end.

<i>The Hunger Games</i> being a comp also makes perfect sense to me. <i>Immortal Longings</i> introduces a city with discontented citizens that participate almost yearly in something referred to only as "the games," where eighty-eight citizens battle to the death in order to win riches beyond their wildest dreams, money that can pull them out of their bleak living situations. The games begin with something known as the Daqun, where—in a scene extraordinarily similar to the Cornucopia bloodbath—contestants gather inside the coliseum and wait for palace guards to drop sacks of gold and wristband chips from the throne room balcony, effectively marking the commencement of the fighting. Contestants then murder each other in an attempt to get their hands on at least one of these sacks before slinking away and looking for weapons they can use later on against their remaining competitors. There is a moment very near the end of the novel where

Calla and Anton, in the final fight to their deaths, choose instead to let go of their weapons and embrace each other, reminding any reader familiar with the source material of Peeta and Katniss' final stand in the 74th annual Hunger Games

. Without giving Collins' series the credit that it deserved, Gong would have run the risk of having her novel called a ripoff. Thankfully the political system and socioeconomic issues <i>Immortal Longings</i> purports to discuss are so appallingly designed and crudely executed that all similarities to <i>The Hunger Games</i> begin and end with the existence of the games themselves.

I read <a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_07_22/">this short story</a> a few months ago and because of it, I was unable to take the last 30% of <i>Immortal Longings</i> seriously. Perhaps the 90s noir subgenre is by nature overdramatic; I wouldn't know, since I haven't read or watched much of it. What I do know now is that Gong's interpretation of it wasn't to my taste at all. The sly references to dialogue from <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> as well as the unexpected last few lines of this novel may have piqued my curiosity, but I don't think an interesting ending is enough to warrant my recommending this book to others—or even considering reading its sequel myself.

Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang

challenging dark emotional tense fast-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

Blog review here!

M.L. Wang’s upcoming novel stands at the intersection of several genres. Blood Over Bright Haven is in part dark academia, presenting magic as a field of research where one can excel and climb up the ranks if they study hard enough. It is in part gaslamp fantasy, with a setting that relies heavily on corsets and petticoats and the traditional gendered separation of public and private spheres in society. In part, the novel is the hybrid genre of science fantasy, with mathematical and scientific principles forming the foundation for the magic system the author has created. Far from generating a disjointed narrative, though, all these genres work together very well, crafting a gripping tale of exploitation, tragedy, and the corruptive nature of power that had me at the very edge of my seat until the final page.

Intersectionality also makes up the heart of Blood Over Bright Haven's narrative. To one of the main characters of the novel, academia is “a man’s world.” That isn’t to say she wants to stay away from the field; conversely, being a researcher at the topmost rung of the ladder is everything Sciona Freynan has ever wanted. Traversing hostile environments is something Sciona does regularly in her pursuit of both knowledge and greatness, and the interactions she has with the people around her—almost all men, almost all resentful of her presence among them—inform her perception of the world. Sciona believes that if she can just break past the barrier forbidding women from being accepted into the High Magistry, she will be able to change not only her own life but also the lives of all female research mages that come after her.

What she doesn’t realize until much, much later is that not all women are given the opportunity to study for positions as research mages in the first place. The novel is set in a land where two peoples reside: the first are the indigenous tribes of the Kwen, the second the Tiranish settler colonizers that have built their homes on stolen land. Every Kwen tribe faces the risk of extinction: an evil called the Blight stalks them, unseen, unheard, striking people when they least expect it and taking their lives in a flash of light that devours their bodies in seconds. The only safe place is the city of Tiran, where a magic-fuelled barrier protects both settlers and Kwen not only from Blight but also from the cold of winter. Kwen tribes are often faced with the unpleasant decision of either staying where they are or risking the dangerous passage to Tiran over the frozen lake around it, an area known to be the Blight’s favorite haunt. Those who survive the passage do not always survive life in Tiran, though: all Kwen are expected to work long, arduous hours in exchange for being allowed inside the city, a mandate that spares no man or woman, child or elderly person. Pursuing an education or practicing their own religion are freedoms prohibited to them; unlike the Tiranish, the only way for Kwen to step foot inside Sciona’s beloved University of Magics and Industry is as janitors and cleaning staff—which is what our second main character, Thomil Siernes-Caldonn, happens to be when he meets Sciona for the very first time.

If the man of good intentions never manifests a river, only calamity, should he not go to hell?

While the topics the author has chosen to focus on in her novel aren’t particularly unique to fiction—writers have been incorporating themes of intersectionality, racism, imperialism, and colonization into their works since long before the phrase “the Empire writes back” was coined—Wang has integrated these topics so well into her fantasy setting that there is no separating one from the other. What I found to be an infinitely more interesting aspect of the novel was the Kwen stance on morality and the afterlife. During one of Thomil and Sciona’s regular philosophical and scientific discussions while at work in her lab, the two touch upon the Kwen belief system and how it differs from the two major Tiranish ones. To Sciona, a man’s intentions are enough to judge his worth, for God to decide whether he belongs in Heaven or Hell. To Thomil and the rest of the Kwen, however, no amount of good intentions can balance out a man’s actions and his impact on the world. It doesn’t matter if he meant well; what matters is if he also did well. All attempts at innovation with the honorable intention to make people’s lives better are therefore, according to Thomil’s perspective, moot if they harm more lives than they help. This difference in the perception of right and wrong is one instance that speaks to Wang’s prowess in worldbuilding down to every seemingly minor detail, but worldbuilding isn’t Wang’s only intention here. What seems to be a throwaway conversation meant only to imbue Thomil and Sciona’s working relationship with tension and mistrust later turns into a number of questions for the readers to ask themselves as the story progresses: which of the characters can actually be considered good people? Which of them are bad? Who deserves to go to Heaven, and who to Hell?

Although I ended my read very much satisfied with it, its first chapter left me uncertain with my expectations. The novel begins with Thomil’s point of view as he and his tribe attempt the treacherous crossing into Tiran. Such high stakes and intense emotion make for an unusual starting point to a story, especially considering how the next chapter features a ten-year time skip and a complete shift to Sciona’s point of view for the next several chapters to come. This first chapter appears then to be more of a prologue than the solid launch of a narrative. It took me a significant amount of reading to understand this choice on the author’s part. At her essence, Sciona is an unreliable narrator: she knows little of her own city beyond the university and her aunt’s home, and she has bought into the propaganda every Tiranish citizen is fed regarding the treatment of Kwen both within and outside the Kwen Quarter. Thomil’s initial chapter serves to show readers the truth of Tiranish discrimination against the Kwen, allowing them to walk into Sciona’s oblivious perspective better informed than she is and therefore able to see beyond her ingrained biases to understand Thomil’s offhand remarks about his situation. Wang isn’t trying to make facts about Thomil’s life a mystery to readers, plot twists that they will discover if only they read on. Far from it: racism and mistreatment of Kwen natives are aspects of her novel integral to the storyline, and only with that information in hand will readers recognize the themes Wang wishes to highlight from the get-go.

Our main characters are skillfully crafted and their relationship to each other managed well. Sciona’s arc is handled with competence despite its complexity, making her viewpoints and decisions entirely reasonable in the context of her determined and curious nature. Thomil, though with fewer chapters to his name, presents as a convincing counterpart to his new boss, and the glimpses we get into his priorities through his carefully worded comments to Sciona show how observant he is even though he endeavors to appear uneducated and nonthreatening.

One of my favorite parts of the novel was when Thomil innocently asked Sciona why she wouldn't work together with her colleagues. If the purpose of her project with the barrier expansion was to help the people of Tiran, why wouldn't she pool resources with Cleon Renthorn and present the best possible proposal for the project? Why insist upon working alone to get the credit herself? Sciona was naturally horrified by this line of questioning and assumed Thomil was too ignorant to know better, but I will forever remember his iconic takedown of academia and its traditions of greed and selfishness.

Sometimes he slips up and mistakes Sciona’s kindness for friendship, only to be met with her willful blindness to the atrocities committed by her people against his on a daily basis; every attempt he makes to really talk to her leaves him taking back his words and retreating further into himself, afraid that anything else he says will capsize the careful balance he and his only remaining family have managed to find in this hostile city.

The novel being plot-heavy and purposeful, working a fast pace towards its ending, left little room for properly fleshed out side characters. Many of these characters felt two-dimensional, caricatures serving only to emphasize the novel’s message.

I fully understand the reasoning behind the Alba reveal, for instance, but it came about so suddenly that I was left with a certain measure of disbelief over whether she would really act in such a manner in front of her cousin. If there's anything I learned from Atticus Finch, it's that even the seemingly kindest of souls can believe themselves superior to others solely based on the color of their skin, so Alba prioritizing herself over hundreds of thousands of Kwen isn't unrealistic at all; I just wish it had been presented better./spoiler> I wonder how much of this lack of characterization can be accounted for through the knowledge that Blood Over Bright Haven was originally planned as a novella, and the story only expanded to the length of a full novel over the course of editing it. Even if this fact is disregarded, there are moments where characterization and worldbuilding do not feel harmonious. A furious Sciona being asked by a male colleague whether it was her time of the month, for example, feels out of place in a setting where discussing women’s bodies is considered taboo—so much so that Sciona feels uncomfortable with the mere idea of mentioning aloud that she’s returning to the lab from a bathroom break.

Bear in mind that this review is of an advanced copy of the book, and Blood Over Bright Haven may undergo more editing before its official publication, set for July 25 of this year. It is an excellent, excellent read, and fans of dark academia, intricately described magic systems, or Babel by R.F. Kuang should keep an eye out for this novel—or, alternatively, preorder it here.

Thank you to the author for providing me with an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed above are my own. 

Vita Nostra by Marina Dyachenko, Sergey Dyachenko

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

5.0

ever since i finished reading this book i've been trying to figure out what to say to convince others to read it too but i still haven't found the words. anyway please read this