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more_books_than_days's reviews
44 reviews
The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett
adventurous
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
There are several graphic depictions of women in this story as victims of extreme violence and sexual assault. By the end of the book I was emotionally exhausted by the toll of this constant oppression and powerlessness, which was developed into the fabric of the story from the very beginning.
With a cast of characters who fell into predictable tropes, either good or evil with little in between, the plot also felt predictable, and very slow moving. I ended up skipping paragraphs and skim reading many pages rather than battling through sections of prose that did little to advance the story. This was a disappointment,
because I very much enjoyed the Pillars of The Earth trilogy.
With a cast of characters who fell into predictable tropes, either good or evil with little in between, the plot also felt predictable, and very slow moving. I ended up skipping paragraphs and skim reading many pages rather than battling through sections of prose that did little to advance the story. This was a disappointment,
because I very much enjoyed the Pillars of The Earth trilogy.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Torture, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Rape, Pregnancy, Physical abuse, Death, Gore, and Sexism
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Confinement, Death of parent, Alcoholism, Infidelity, Medical trauma, Murder, Violence, Suicide, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Sexism, Pregnancy, Pedophilia, Chronic illness, Excrement, and Kidnapping
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Emotional abuse, Grief, and Infidelity
The Centaur's Wife by Amanda Leduc
5.0
Amanda Leduc takes the dark beauty found in the original Grimm fairytales, and makes it into something new, crafting her own tales that rival those we've grown up with. She brings out the monsters, the weak, the dispossessed, and reveals that they are exactly who and what they should be. She reveals the power of community, of chosen family, and of the stories we tell ourselves. This novel is magical realism meets post-apocalyptic, and for any lover of fairy tale and fantasy, it is a must read. I also highly recommend reading Leduc's work of non-fiction, Disfigured, which reveals many of the foundational ideas, along with her own disability rights activism, that have been formative to this work of fiction.
This Is How It Is by Sharon King-Campbell
5.0
Sharon King-Campbell writes with such apparent ease. There is a stunning dexterity to her use of language and imagery. Her poetry catches the imagination, catches my breath, and catches pieces of life spanning from Newfoundland, to Thailand, to New Zealand and back again.
Poems of love and friendship, and of family and memory, of nature and environmentalism, of mythology and history, all come together in an orchestra of words.
Poems of love and friendship, and of family and memory, of nature and environmentalism, of mythology and history, all come together in an orchestra of words.
Polar Vortex by Shani Mootoo
3.0
This novel offers a sort of antithesis to the often portrayed perfect 'happy gay couple'. There is a realness to this relationship that is susceptible to failure, like any other. A commonness to a pairing haunted by their past, and encumbered by questions of their individual identities.
We meet Priya, and her wife Alex, as a season of bitter cold envelopes their relationship. Insecurities and secrets fall like snow, burying fondness and blocking affection. Ice builds between them, seeping across their words like a January chill. It seems as if they allow this freeze to numb their hearts, bracing themselves against an almost inevitable breaking. As they turn from one another, their relationship begins to starve. They become like the songbirds at their empty feeder in the barren belly of winter. When past and present collide, we reach the final page, left to write our own ending. The story becomes ours, to do with what we see fit... do we end this polar vortex, or do we abandon these characters to find their own way? Shani Mootoo hands it to us, she has finished with it.
We meet Priya, and her wife Alex, as a season of bitter cold envelopes their relationship. Insecurities and secrets fall like snow, burying fondness and blocking affection. Ice builds between them, seeping across their words like a January chill. It seems as if they allow this freeze to numb their hearts, bracing themselves against an almost inevitable breaking. As they turn from one another, their relationship begins to starve. They become like the songbirds at their empty feeder in the barren belly of winter. When past and present collide, we reach the final page, left to write our own ending. The story becomes ours, to do with what we see fit... do we end this polar vortex, or do we abandon these characters to find their own way? Shani Mootoo hands it to us, she has finished with it.
Gutter Child by Jael Richardson
4.0
This book feels cinematic in its scope; both deeply intimate and widely relevant to our present and our past. There are times when you feel the gut-wrenching-umph of truth, as the plotline blurs between events so similar to those you've read about, or heard about, or lived through yourself, and those fictional characters who drive it along. Human strength, beauty, fear, destruction, and ignorance are all bundled up for us in prose that seems to run across the page; clear and smooth. Dystopia offering just enough distance, and like a mirror, insisting we gaze at our reflection
The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk
3.0
Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk is a romantic-fantasy, combining the period drama of a Jane Austen novel, with the dark magics of Leigh Bardugo. If Elizabeth Bennet could summon spirits, and spent her days seeking out guidebooks to magic, all while falling madly in love with a kind, rich, handsome hero, then you've got this book.
Just like Austen used her novels as a commentary on the gender roles, and classism of her day, Polk uses her characters to address the issues of female autonomy, and each person's right to make decisions about their own bodies. Her female characters are fierce, and unbending against a patriarchal system that excludes them from education, whilst binding them in motherhood.
Just like Austen used her novels as a commentary on the gender roles, and classism of her day, Polk uses her characters to address the issues of female autonomy, and each person's right to make decisions about their own bodies. Her female characters are fierce, and unbending against a patriarchal system that excludes them from education, whilst binding them in motherhood.
You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked. by Sheung-King
4.0
This novel is a series of stories, caught in a snapshot, like a polaroid. The whole book feels a little like a photo album that way... Moment beside moment, story after story, not necessarily connected in time, but connected as a whole. It reads as auto-fiction and hopeless love story all rolled into one.
Sheung-King imbibes his fictional self-narrative with folk tales and critical discussions on literature, in the same breath that he challenges western tropes and Orientalism. He writes portraits of characters who are fully flawed and culturally transient alongside portraits of the cities where they find themselves. It all comes together somehow. Strange and beautiful.
Sheung-King imbibes his fictional self-narrative with folk tales and critical discussions on literature, in the same breath that he challenges western tropes and Orientalism. He writes portraits of characters who are fully flawed and culturally transient alongside portraits of the cities where they find themselves. It all comes together somehow. Strange and beautiful.
Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir by Kai Cheng Thom
5.0
Kai Cheng Thom has written a surreal piece of auto-fiction, that feels both like a letter of love, and the speaking-of-life into dreams for every trans woman and fierce femme. Her 'memoir' bursts with magic and dangerous women empowered.
Our heroine narrates her own story, from escaping the locked doors of her childhood home, in the bleak-grey of a city called Gloom, to the glittering smoke that is the Street of Miracles... Where she finds herself, her trans sisters, her gang of Lipstick Lacerators, her first love, and where she learns that to stop hurting others she must first stop hurting herself.
I adored the fast paced beauty and unapologetic fire of Kai Cheng Thom's story. It's a kind of trans coming-of-age novel, where you might watch, unsurprised, as Salvadore Dali's clocks melt in the sky, while mermaids the size of humpbacked whales heave themselves onto beaches in protest at humanity's destruction of the earth. Utterly fabulous.
Our heroine narrates her own story, from escaping the locked doors of her childhood home, in the bleak-grey of a city called Gloom, to the glittering smoke that is the Street of Miracles... Where she finds herself, her trans sisters, her gang of Lipstick Lacerators, her first love, and where she learns that to stop hurting others she must first stop hurting herself.
I adored the fast paced beauty and unapologetic fire of Kai Cheng Thom's story. It's a kind of trans coming-of-age novel, where you might watch, unsurprised, as Salvadore Dali's clocks melt in the sky, while mermaids the size of humpbacked whales heave themselves onto beaches in protest at humanity's destruction of the earth. Utterly fabulous.
Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age by Darrel J. McLeod
4.0
A memoir of one man who discovered the voices of his ancestors, and his own queer self, despite generations of colonial trauma, and oppression. His reflections are full of tenderness and nightmare. They will break to the center of your heart, even as they open your eyes to a bold and fulfilled life. 'Mamaskatch' is the Cree word used to express a dream shared. Darrel J. McLeod shares the dream that was passed to him through his mother's love. A dream embodied in reclaiming his Cree heritage, and revealed to us through an unflinching retelling of his coming of age, and stories rich with love for his family.
Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
5.0
Five Little Indians is fiction, but it's stories are echos of real lives. Michelle Good has given life to five voices who communicate the reality of a living hell that was centuries of state and church run residential schools in Canada, and the deep scars imprinted on generations of indigenous people.
These schools claimed to be saving the very fabric of 'savage' souls when, in fact, children were shorn of safety, torn from community, ripped from the outstretched arms of their families; their bodies ravaged, starved from their ancestors, and stripped bare in a cruelty that continues to shock me breathless. Children were imprisoned in boarding schools that twisted religion into the claws of cultural genocide, and if they lived to adolescence, these same children were carelessly abandoned to a system ingrained to oppress, and judged without mercy by a society comfortable in the armchairs of ignorance and privilege.
This book left me with tears in my eyes and an ache in my heart. Each of the characters comes to life within devastatingly well written and tender prose. Good brings her readers to her side, sits us close, and reveals five journeys, often interwoven, finding their way to peace.
If you are looking for more understanding on what the residential school system was, and it's continuing impact for all of us living on unceded land, known first as Turtle Island, read this book.
These schools claimed to be saving the very fabric of 'savage' souls when, in fact, children were shorn of safety, torn from community, ripped from the outstretched arms of their families; their bodies ravaged, starved from their ancestors, and stripped bare in a cruelty that continues to shock me breathless. Children were imprisoned in boarding schools that twisted religion into the claws of cultural genocide, and if they lived to adolescence, these same children were carelessly abandoned to a system ingrained to oppress, and judged without mercy by a society comfortable in the armchairs of ignorance and privilege.
This book left me with tears in my eyes and an ache in my heart. Each of the characters comes to life within devastatingly well written and tender prose. Good brings her readers to her side, sits us close, and reveals five journeys, often interwoven, finding their way to peace.
If you are looking for more understanding on what the residential school system was, and it's continuing impact for all of us living on unceded land, known first as Turtle Island, read this book.