mgdoherty's reviews
320 reviews

Lady Killer, Vol. 1 by Jamie S. Rich
Did not finish book.

No longer remember why I didn’t finish but probably just wasn’t for me. 

The Gods Awoke by Marie Vibbert

funny hopeful mysterious tense slow-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

The voice is fantastic. Senne’s narration as an omnipotent god allows us to closely follow her but also follow several other character’s in third person, because Senne is observing them so carefully and listening in on their thoughts. Senne is also hilarious, sometimes without even meaning to be. She is learning how to manifest herself to humans, which results in hilarious manifestations such as when she manifests but struggles to imagine feet for herself, when she can’t figure out how to manifest hair, or when Senne accidentally presents herself while wearing the colors of one of Revestre’s priests. She’s also thoughtful and criticizes humanity’s myths for painting her as one-note, boy-crazy villain… and then feels embarrassed when she finds herself acting boy-crazy, after all. 

The matriarchal society makes for a fascinating setting because for as much catharsis and relief as I found in reading a book where women were 100% safe and respected and were not being assaulted, this book also never lets you forget that this matriarchal society is every bit as sexist as a patriarchal society. Male characters are not guaranteed respect or dignity; their intelligence is questioned; they are sexualized and objectified and are kept a metaphorical step behind the women. 

This is especially appareant with two of our main characters, Hitra and Illoe. Illoe was sold as an indentured servant to Hitra’s family, and while their relationship is more like that of best friends who have crushes on each other, the difference in their stations and Hitra’s unspoken (later spoken) power over Illoe hurts him much more than it hurts her. Hitra is a priest and arguably a holy woman who has been chosen by the gods, but Vibbert doesn’t shy away from showing when Hitra willfully ignores her own privileged position and the effect that has on Illoe’s well-being.

At one point her own ignorance even plays a role in Illoe being briefly imprisoned in the home of a powerful wealthy man and woman, who alternately beat him and psychically “hit” him.

I do think Illoe forgives Hitra a little bit too easily. While she never meant any harm, her inability to take responsibly did lead to real harm coming to Illoe. That said, the book ends with

their relationship being on an open ended hopeful note, so it doesn’t bother me as much as it might if they’d leapt into a relationship immediately.

 

Regarding the ending and how the “mystery” is solved, it’s so beautiful 

that the gods are explicitly NOT the gods from religious myths, but some other entity entirely, which was “activated” by a minor religious sect’s prayers, and now this entity has broken into 14 new entities who must consciously choose to become the responsible gods that humanity deserves. That’s really cool that these entities, these “gods”, are not gods at all, but because they are intrigued by humanity and want to do them justice, they choose to become the gods that humanity needs.

I think this would appeal to fans of N. K. Jemison’s The inheritance trilogy. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Slavery

Shoe Addicts Anonymous by Beth Harbison

lighthearted fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

I was so excited to find this book because this is exactly my kind of book, and the title is reminiscent of one of my favorite books, CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC. Unfortunately this book was not for me. I really enjoyed the lighthearted quick pace at the beginning but as we got further into the book, it felt like the author was struggling to balance the large cast of characters. There were multiple plot twists and character beats that had little to no setup. It was really hard to feel invested in these characters or their struggles when the story structure is so shallow. One character’s romance happens only 20 pages from the end and it takes place in 2 pages, possibly less. 

This book also aged really weirdly. Its attitude toward aueer people and especially the main characters’ lowkey transphobia was really uncomfortable to read. 

I did enjoy how Lorna’s romance was constructed, though, because that was seeded throughout the novel. Overall I think Lorna’s story was told the most skillfully. The other three storylines were messier. 

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

emotional funny inspiring reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

Once again this is a placeholder review with more in-depth thoughts to come once I look over my annotations, but wow. On one hand, I can tell this was originally the first act to Alecto the Ninth because it’s almost all rising action, and objectively that feels weird to me, but on the other hand, this book is so necessary for the themes. It was so necessary to spend this time developing the characters, showing us how everyday citizens live under Nine Houses rule, and letting us get to know these characters more personally, because this raised the stakes so much higher than they were before. I feel conflicted because I know now certain beloved characters were in the wrong and inadvertently contributing to other new beloved characters’ suffering. 

- when trauma is stripped away from us, how free we can become. 
- how love is always a worthy experience to have, even if it must end 
- something something “Jesus so loved the world that he died for it”, or something. Or maybe more accurately,

Earth so loved the creatures that lived on her that she died for them

 
-parallels/foils in Cam/Pal and Harrow/Gideon. Their jealousy, then Gideon’s jealousy. 
- feels like we’re missing a solid chunk of story (Kiriona and Ianthe?!) and I hope we get those blanks filled in the next book 
- the messenger? What’s the message? 
- ocean? Kingdom by the sea? 

Little Thieves by Margaret Owen

4.0

Trick Mirror or Your Computer Screen by Rachael Crosbie

5.0

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

3.75

Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda

4.0

A book that deeply resonated with me and one of the most precious books on my shelf.

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

This book has a lot to say about trauma; about the burdens older generations leave for the next generation to shoulder; about forgiveness, forgiving yourself for what you could not control and for your own ignorance, and forgiving others for their weakness. One of my favorite scenes involved an adult apologizing to a younger person for not having protected them from abuse and neglect. “I should’ve offered help. I was an adult, and you were a neglected child.” 

 

In a way this deconstructs a lot of YA tropes I’ve read in other series, much like Hunger Games also deconstructs the tropes that were common at the time. Terrible things happen to these protagonists in The Locked Tomb series, and they are allowed to act as traumatized as they feel in these books. In Gideon the Ninth, Gideon and Harrow were largely hiding their true selves inside the story-like roles they played – Gideon the tough dumb hero who was too tough to ever be hurt or feel trauma, and Harrow the evil war crime who was an abomination from birth who will take out her pain on the world because as “evil” as she is, she has to be worth the sacrifice her parents made to conceive her. (She never can be, but she still has to try; it’s a compulsion.) These roles allowed them to deal with the trauma of their lives in Ninth House. 

But in Harrow The Ninth, these fairytale roles have been stripped away. Harrow spent her entire life defining herself in opposition to Gideon, the child who survived her parents’ genocide. She doesn’t know who she is without Gideon; she might not exist at all, if she doesn’t have Gideon to define herself against. Without Gideon, she’s lost the biggest part of her identity, and she cannot live with it, she absolutely cannot live with this, but neither can she die, because she has to live and somehow become worthy of this sacrifice she never asked for. 

Due to trauma, Harrow has control issues. She can’t accept that Gideon died via suicide (in a roundabout way) and calls it murder because it’s easier to hate herself for killing Gideon than to hate Gideon for leaving her alone. One character says it best when they say: “What is better? An ignoble death by someone else’s hands or heroic death by one’s own? If the first -- that she was cut down by an enemy -- I would feel such hate for the enemy. If the second – an ugly death, at her own devising -- who then would be left for me to hate? The eternal problem.” 

 And so Harrow chooses to blame herself for Gideon’s death because it hurts too much to give up control, to admit that Gideon made a choice without her, a choice that left her stranded alone on the island of Lyctorhood. She can’t accept that Gideon died via suicide (in a roundabout way) and calls it murder because it’s easier to hate herself for killing Gideon than to hate Gideon for leaving her alone. 

There are a lot of mysteries floating around this book, seemingly moreso than GtN. We have The Body and The Sleeper, our most mysterious new players on the stage, and this all resolves at the end with answers for who these mysterious players are, but the journey up till then is a bit confusing. I took a lot of notes and had a lot of incorrect theories! Like GtN, I think this is a book I may appreciate more on reread, though I did enjoy it and admire the craft a lot. 

Also I’m just gonna drop a spoilery paragraph here to say

how incredible it is that The Sleeper (aka Commander Wake, aka Gideon’s mom) who seems to be deeply and determinedly human, not a hint of magic about her at all, and yet she is the deadliest person in the galaxy, dead or alive apparently. Her vengeance will be legend, when it comes to pass.

Pacing: This book is so slow. I love how it slowly revealed nuggets of information but the super-slow pacing + the nonlinearity made it a very hard story to digest. I think at least fifty pages could’ve been cut, and that’s a conversative estimate. 

It took me two years to feel emotionally ready to tackle this book, and I’m glad I waited. I think I needed time to digest the end of Book 1, and this, too, is a book that you may need time to digest. That said, I think it is well worth the effort you put in. Also, the humor and memes are incredible. 
 
 

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The Red Palace by June Hur 허주은

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

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

Oh my god, this was so good. I think the ending was a bit rushed for my preferences; it felt like once the mystery was solved, it was a mad rush through the epilogue, and I would’ve loved to read more slowly about the consequences. But regardless, still a great read. June Hur is absolutely one of those authors where I think would read anything she wrote, because she’s so good at writing emotional stories. She’s two-for-two on making me cry with one of her books, and not many writers can do that. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder