i cannot, in all objectivity, rate 'Gray' above 4.5 stars, but i also cannot, in all honesty, rate this book less than at least 4.5 stars. for similar reasons, i rated my favorite novel, 'Tarkin' by James Luceno, a 4.5. they are both deeply flawed, i know exactly what the flaws are, i know exactly how said flaws could've been remedied, and i must acknowledge that these are not perfect books (far from it, even), but i must also acknowledge that i wholeheartedly love them, and that they speak to me on a viscerally personal level.

'Gray' is the first thing in a long time that has made me really feel. it made me cry laughing. it is one of the most depressing books i've ever read. it's violently misogynistic, arguably in a satirical manner, but none the less misogynistic. in fact, this book could easily be classified as a satire. i think that's fucking incredible, self-effacing, ridiculous, insane, etc. smashing a pie into your own face and all that, if anyone remembers that bitter rant of mine. arguably, the pie doesn't even land, and the floor is dirty, and he's caught white-handed.

this is the novel-length equivalent of the 'i mean he apologized for it and his dick is ten inches throbbing and he has anxiety and panic attacks and i want him to fuck me [sic] i rlly [sic] don't think it was on purpose' tweet, except he hasn't apologized and definitely intended at least 90% of this on purpose. fuck Him for real.

maybe if i weren't having a depressive episode to end all depressive episodes, i wouldn't have liked this book so much. but who fucking cares? it gave me a reason to get out of bed, even just earlier today. i put it in my closet, so i had to get out of bed every day to pick it up and read it, and, by g-d, did i want to read it.

reading 'Gray' is a lot like watching a car crash, except i've been the car crashing, so it puts things into perspective. it's different being a by-stander. it's different simply having no control, not stripping it from yourself, not swerving because it's your g-d damn car and you're the one fucking driving it, aren't you? it's standing in the middle of the road, watching the car careen into the retaining wall, split a tree in half, smashing another car to bits in the process. as the book progressed, this analogy only got more and more fitting. he, too, is obsessed with vehicular accidents.

it has a sudden, open-ended ending that leaves it feeling distinctly unfinished, but also makes you want to immediately re-read it because the ending recontextualizes the entire story. maybe it is a complete story, and he just ends it like that on purpose. maybe he just needed it out of his system. maybe he didn't want to finish it. maybe he couldn't finish it.

but i don't give a fuck. BEST BOOK EVER. leave me and my wet cardboard box boy alone.... we're going to go stand on lake shore together and think really hard about doing drugs, but then not do any.

edit: upon further consideration, this book is a deeply purposeful Marxist masterpiece and deserves a 5 star rating. i don't make the rules.

Content Warnings

Landline by Rainbow Rowell

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

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

4.5

"You don’t know what it really means to crawl into someone else’s life and stay there. You can’t see all the ways you’re going to get tangled, how you’re going to bond skin to skin. How the idea of separating will feel in five years, in ten—in fifteen. When Georgie thought about divorce now, she imagined lying side by side with Neal on two operating tables while a team of doctors tried to unthread their vascular systems."

"Georgie hadn't known back then how much she was going to come to need Neal, how he was going to become like air to her.
Was that codependence? Or was it just marriage?"

i think i hauve covid.

Specter of the Past by Timothy Zahn

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adventurous hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

while still certainly enjoyable, this entry in zahn's thrawn series fell a little flat in comparison to his previous outings. the drama often felt trite and forced. plus, it was a bit too short for the amount of plots and characters it wanted to have. most of it seems like it'll be tied up in the next book, but it left me wanting more from the anticlimactic finish of this one.

that being said, all of the usual zahn-y goodness is present. great fights and intrigue. i love how thrawn was brought-back-but-not-really. his absence left a hole that moff disra and co. just aren't really filling for me, but i do like what zahn did with thrawn here.

Death Star by Steve Perry, Michael Reaves

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adventurous sad tense medium-paced

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

2.0

this book is so frustrating. prefacing that i am incredibly biased towards the new Disney canon, but i've enjoyed all of Legends that i have read with my own two eyes, up until this.

the good:

- darth vader's internal monologue is pretty in-character and it's interesting to get an idea of what he was thinking while a new hope was going on, even if i disagree with some of the character decisions they made due to obvious misinterpretation.

- my enjoyment and the over-all quality of the book began to rise as soon as this novel's story began intersecting more and more with a new hope, because it's kinda hard to fuck up a retelling of arguably one of the most narratively perfect films of all time.

- on paper, i really like daala and tarkin's relationship, but they barely dive into it here.

the bad:

- this book DOES NOT incorporate new details into preexisting canon well. it is hindered by preexisting canon's story beats and preexisting characters' plot armors. it cannot to save its life add or commit AT ALL to anything not totally stupid and irrelevant (like the exhaust port being a total accident! at least rogue one tried to make it meaningful.) new to the lore of the death star or a new hope as a film, or else it'd fuck up canon.

- the misogyny. straight-up the way every single female character in this book is written (besides leia, who is barely present and once again, they kinda can't fuck up thanks to preexisting canon) is misogynistic. they are all there to be bland eye-candy (two of the three main female characters have scenes in which they undress in front of bystanders, the first of which was unnecessary and uncalled for in the story and the character who saw her strip acted uncomfortable about it. like that was just wank for the writers because star wars is allergic to not oversexualizing its alien women, especially twi'leks.) and love interests to the bland dime-a-dozen straight guys that make up the majority of the cast.

the only female character (daala, who didn't get a canonical first name until even later after this book, which says it all, really,) in the cast who does anything of note is totally robbed of all her character agency the second they can because it would interfere too much with preexisting canon, is almost fridged but wait they can't do that either because of preexisting Legends canon about her post-original trilogy, and then immediately sent away to never truly be touched on again as a legitimate character. she is purely there to boost up her male love interest, tarkin, and they don't even do a good job at that, either.

- this book has a disdain for tarkin, whom i am obviously biased towards, when they need to be treating him like they would treat every other character who matters in this book. it just doesn't care about him outside of his relationship with daala,

and once again, they get rid of her as soon as possible so she doesn't interfere too much with the preexisting plot of a new hope!

i am so sorry to break it to these authors, who obviously project their dislike of tarkin onto vader, whom they obviously really really really like, but tarkin and vader are, if not canonically friends (which they are, even before clone wars came out,) then they are, at the very least, more interesting as friends. i hate when people write tarkin and vader's relationship as this middling, they-both-find-the-other-one-silly-but-don't-say-anything-about-it-to-save-face, barely-there-at-all co-existence. if you're going to make them not like each other, at least TRY to make it interesting.

- speaking of bland disinterest, none of the characters the book is trying to get you to like are likeable, and there are far too many to keep up with, especially early on. i could not get emotionally invested in any of these people. i don't care. maybe if this book was one or two hundred pages longer, it could've handled such a large ensemble cast, but at its current page length, it couldn't take its time with anyone.

- once again, all the painfully forced cishet relationships, which are seemingly only there to tie the characters together more closely so they can all be there for the finale.

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pinkmalady's reviews 125 reviews

pinkmalady's reviews
125 reviews