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145 reviews
Dark Heir by C.S. Pacat
4.75
*screaming about will at the top of my lungs*
he’s a GOOD man savannah!
This was torture, pure soul crushing torture (positive)
he’s a GOOD man savannah!
This was torture, pure soul crushing torture (positive)
Dark Rise by C.S. Pacat
4.0
I am notoriously harsh when it comes to YA and even more so with YA fantasy but i did enjoy this.
She was cute and I have a soft spot all the characters which is rare.
Vocab choice was lovelyyyy which seems an odd thing to point out but there were loads of evocative choices alongside evocative description that worked well. I would’ve bumped this up if I hadn’t clocked the “twist” that has been marketed with this book in the first 3 chapters of the book because of a fucking horse lol pattern recognition went a bit brazy with that one.
She was cute and I have a soft spot all the characters which is rare.
Vocab choice was lovelyyyy which seems an odd thing to point out but there were loads of evocative choices alongside evocative description that worked well. I would’ve bumped this up if I hadn’t clocked the “twist” that has been marketed with this book in the first 3 chapters of the book because of a fucking horse lol pattern recognition went a bit brazy with that one.
Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang
challenging
emotional
hopeful
tense
medium-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
5.0
Very few fantasy authors could accomplish over a trilogy what M L Wang did in one book! God bless self-publishing honestly because in the triumphs of this novel I saw the pitfalls of trad publishing.
This rocked my world. The allegory was so precise it cut and unravelled me like I’d been struck by the blight.
This rocked my world. The allegory was so precise it cut and unravelled me like I’d been struck by the blight.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
4.25
It has taken me at least 4 days to try and gather my thoughts, and I still have no idea where I stand but I know that a re-read is inevitable.
I don’t know if I can say I enjoyed all the way through it but fuck if it isn’t memorable.
I felt like I was being suffocated and even so kept opening the book because I had to know how it ended. TSH is a TOME!! 630+ pages mean by the time I got to the second half of the narrative I was dreading the fallout but I also couldn’t predict where I thought it would go.
I love fallout i do. The mental decline after doing something despicable count me in! But it was also meandering and slow. The rich verbose descriptions of interior and exterior worlds that Richard provides drag more than they enhance in complete contrast to book one. The dichotomy between book 1 and 2 is a subject of contention for me because it’s a purposeful decision of course it is. Different mental states and all. the tedium of pretending to not be a murderous uni student will turn anyone to drink drugs and mindless walks through campus - it will! But it doesn’t make the reading experience less tedious. Even for all of miss Tartts heft regarding structure, pace is compromised in a weird way. So many conversations are happening in the second half, important information is finally being imparted, mysteries are being broken open but the repetitive presence of alcohol and self-pity leaves the reader bitter and agitated. Not too dissimilar from the Greek class themselves. See - genius. See - discomfort.
Regardless, the last 100 pages of the secret history felt like I was having my brain put through a miter saw (in a good way) and so almost ALMOST but not quite make up for this repetitive saga of coping mechanisms (late night conversations, cigarette smoke and substance abuse.)
After finishing it I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that the structure, the plot and the character arcs are all supposed to mimic a Greek tragedy and so for that we have to give miss tartt her props because the tragedy tragedied. I cant decide if I think she’s a genius or not because richard as the narrator is the least reliable narrator ever and so the most compelling parts of the story are held in the conversations we cannot know. Everything we learn about the college, about Julian, about the others, is tainted by richards “longing for the picturesque” and so the longer I’d finished the novel the more I began to question everything.
I think to myself was it just convenient for bunny to be as bigoted as he was because it makes the audience - richards audience, since he has complete control over what we know and don’t know - sympathise with their decision to kill him. I think about how we get pages and pages with bunny’s parents and what two paragraphs a page at max in each book about his own and one is just a description of domestic abuse which makes us go okay fair play to not going home. But you’re telling me that richards parents pay for his schooling yet don’t call him ONCE, don’t contact him at all? That’s suspicious I’m sorry it is
I value the sense that what appeals to people about the novel is this archaic expression of human ideals in a modern world. The Greek class are completely sequestered from reality and do all they can to further this sentiment past Julian’s involvement. Julian gives them the taste of seeing the world with 5th century eyes and they all cling to it so wholeheartedly they try their best to erase all traces of modernity. They don’t watch the news, they don’t read modern books, they dress like Mormons on the lash, they are rarely involved in college life and even when they do go to parties to drink and revel they do everything to an extreme (Starting fights over minor injustices etc etc)
In the first book it’s charming brand of narcissism and then as the second book is underway you realise DT has given us the blueprints for each personal and moral failure of the entire group. TSH could’ve been written by camilla,Henry, Charles or even bunny and that first line the “showy dark crack running down the middle of a life” is different for each of them.
I find it so interesting that there are 3 deaths in the entire book and really the only one that counts or matters to Richard is Henry’s. The novel begins with that whole line of not knowing the gravity of bunny’s death or whatever but Richard tries so hard to convince us that bunny’s death was as inevitable as Henry’s appeared to me in hindsight.
Not just because of their carefully planned removal of Bunny as an obstacle and not a person, but the fact that henrys true obstacle, the reason he feels incapable of living a life he can be content with is himself!!!!!! And he’s not the only one sorry - all of the Greek class are enamoured by their own misery and forge their relationships on the basis of this discomfort and suffering. Henry is the leader because he exemplifies this!
Terrible Henry so smart, so rich, so depressed to the point of rigid numbness. If Richards fatal flaw is the morbid longing for the picturesque which blinds him and leads him astray, Henry’s is the longing to exist outside of time and space, to reach across time and force everyone he knows and loves to go back with him.
One of the many tragedies but arguably the most important to Richard given the epilogue is the tragedy of Henry’s lost brilliance. How alienating and inspiring it was. And the sad thing is without having Henry there to justify his suicide you can still cobble a Henry-like argument for it. The righteous cleansing of the group by turning himself into the post bacchanal pig. In his fifth century mind where honour is more important than grace, his death absolves himself and the rest of the group from their fates (prison sentences) whilst leaving them indebted to him in a way that he could only half accomplish whilst alive.
Brilliant, psychopathic, miserable Henry, who could only see the colours in the world after painting it with blood and THATS who Richard so desperately wanted to be. Lmfaooooo.
I don’t know if I can say I enjoyed all the way through it but fuck if it isn’t memorable.
I felt like I was being suffocated and even so kept opening the book because I had to know how it ended. TSH is a TOME!! 630+ pages mean by the time I got to the second half of the narrative I was dreading the fallout but I also couldn’t predict where I thought it would go.
I love fallout i do. The mental decline after doing something despicable count me in! But it was also meandering and slow. The rich verbose descriptions of interior and exterior worlds that Richard provides drag more than they enhance in complete contrast to book one. The dichotomy between book 1 and 2 is a subject of contention for me because it’s a purposeful decision of course it is. Different mental states and all. the tedium of pretending to not be a murderous uni student will turn anyone to drink drugs and mindless walks through campus - it will! But it doesn’t make the reading experience less tedious. Even for all of miss Tartts heft regarding structure, pace is compromised in a weird way. So many conversations are happening in the second half, important information is finally being imparted, mysteries are being broken open but the repetitive presence of alcohol and self-pity leaves the reader bitter and agitated. Not too dissimilar from the Greek class themselves. See - genius. See - discomfort.
Regardless, the last 100 pages of the secret history felt like I was having my brain put through a miter saw (in a good way) and so almost ALMOST but not quite make up for this repetitive saga of coping mechanisms (late night conversations, cigarette smoke and substance abuse.)
After finishing it I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that the structure, the plot and the character arcs are all supposed to mimic a Greek tragedy and so for that we have to give miss tartt her props because the tragedy tragedied. I cant decide if I think she’s a genius or not because richard as the narrator is the least reliable narrator ever and so the most compelling parts of the story are held in the conversations we cannot know. Everything we learn about the college, about Julian, about the others, is tainted by richards “longing for the picturesque” and so the longer I’d finished the novel the more I began to question everything.
I value the sense that what appeals to people about the novel is this archaic expression of human ideals in a modern world. The Greek class are completely sequestered from reality and do all they can to further this sentiment past Julian’s involvement. Julian gives them the taste of seeing the world with 5th century eyes and they all cling to it so wholeheartedly they try their best to erase all traces of modernity. They don’t watch the news, they don’t read modern books, they dress like Mormons on the lash, they are rarely involved in college life and even when they do go to parties to drink and revel they do everything to an extreme (Starting fights over minor injustices etc etc)
In the first book it’s charming brand of narcissism and then as the second book is underway you realise DT has given us the blueprints for each personal and moral failure of the entire group. TSH could’ve been written by camilla,Henry, Charles or even bunny and that first line the “showy dark crack running down the middle of a life” is different for each of them.
Not just because of their carefully planned removal of Bunny as an obstacle and not a person, but the fact that henrys true obstacle, the reason he feels incapable of living a life he can be content with is himself!!!!!! And he’s not the only one sorry - all of the Greek class are enamoured by their own misery and forge their relationships on the basis of this discomfort and suffering. Henry is the leader because he exemplifies this!
Terrible Henry so smart, so rich, so depressed to the point of rigid numbness. If Richards fatal flaw is the morbid longing for the picturesque which blinds him and leads him astray, Henry’s is the longing to exist outside of time and space, to reach across time and force everyone he knows and loves to go back with him.
Brilliant, psychopathic, miserable Henry, who could only see the colours in the world after painting it with blood and THATS who Richard so desperately wanted to be. Lmfaooooo.
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
5.0
The tumult of emotion EASTENDERS YOU ARE NOTHING.
It’s crazy because for a solid 70% of this novel I despised Lila and yet still I can understand why they end up reconciling. Lenu is consistently there for Lila and it’s not reciprocated in nearly the same way. I could not believe my eyes when Lila and Nino started the affair. I could not believe my eyes with Lenu “fuck his best friend and make them yes men” Ninos FATHER. Dear god that was a chapter I basically read with my eyes closed. The fact that at first she felt some sort of disassociated power from the act. Then time passes and her response (expectedly) swings and she’s so disappointed that she was driven to believe vulnerability was power.
EF describes Lenu’s emotions so viscerally i can’t help but feel everything she’s feeling. Even when I know she’s being dramatic or over sensitive or over thinking the situation.
When she gets the fever I felt feverish. When she saw Lila and Nino kissing for the first time (after resigning herself to becoming a middle man for reciprocated affections she assumed they would never act on) I gaggeddd. When she gets to Pisa gets the rich boyfriend and slowly goes through the same process of erasure that Lila is attempting in her own way with Stefano, the shop, Nino, Rinuccio.
Both women are trapped in these cycles of wanting to erase themselves!!! to erase their shared history with their surroundings. What an interesting concept!!!
Lenu goes THROUGH it this novel my god.
I constantly think about whether Lila was really in love with Nino from that first handshake or if she was being vindictive. And we just NEVER KNOW for all we have of Lila’s diary entries we will never truly know. But then in turn Lila is walking through the several circles of hell, descending further and further.
It’s ridiculous how the plot swings from happiness to disaster and then in hindsight we find out the happiness is perceived or the disaster is actually a blessing? It’s so fantastical that it turns back to perfectly portray the surreal nature of reality.
I watched past lives on Sunday and the concept of nostalgia being wrapped up in a specific relationship - the tethers that we have to others because of their associations with Place (specifically home) - is so prevalent in this book.
It’s terrifying how Naples is resolutely holding both Lila and Elena back (and from each other.)
They manage, in their own ways, to get out for brief periods of time only to feel that magnetic pull towards each other or the village which then brings them back into the toxicity of their friendship and what Naples represents for each of them.
On the sidelines, what EF does with the minor characters portrays such a vivid cycle of violence and generational trauma !!! You become so embroiled with the domestic lives of each couple and their connections/allegiances to each woman before you know it, you’re hit in the face with the fact that somehow, under a completely different set of circumstances, they’re all living in the Before. There is no After. History is not something you can escape.
It’s crazy because for a solid 70% of this novel I despised Lila and yet still I can understand why they end up reconciling. Lenu is consistently there for Lila and it’s not reciprocated in nearly the same way.
EF describes Lenu’s emotions so viscerally i can’t help but feel everything she’s feeling. Even when I know she’s being dramatic or over sensitive or over thinking the situation.
Both women are trapped in these cycles of wanting to erase themselves!!! to erase their shared history with their surroundings. What an interesting concept!!!
Lenu goes THROUGH it this novel my god.
It’s ridiculous how the plot swings from happiness to disaster and then in hindsight we find out the happiness is perceived or the disaster is actually a blessing? It’s so fantastical that it turns back to perfectly portray the surreal nature of reality.
I watched past lives on Sunday and the concept of nostalgia being wrapped up in a specific relationship - the tethers that we have to others because of their associations with Place (specifically home) - is so prevalent in this book.
It’s terrifying how Naples is resolutely holding both Lila and Elena back (and from each other.)
They manage, in their own ways, to get out for brief periods of time only to feel that magnetic pull towards each other or the village which then brings them back into the toxicity of their friendship and what Naples represents for each of them.
On the sidelines, what EF does with the minor characters portrays such a vivid cycle of violence and generational trauma !!! You become so embroiled with the domestic lives of each couple and their connections/allegiances to each woman before you know it, you’re hit in the face with the fact that somehow, under a completely different set of circumstances, they’re all living in the Before. There is no After. History is not something you can escape.
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
5.0
I did not expect to read 98% of this novel in one day lmfaooooo come and see real literature.
“There, amid the violent explosions, in the cold, in the smoke that burned the nostrils and the strong odor of sulfur, something violated the organic structure of her brother, exercising over him a pressure so strong that it broke down his outlines, and the matter expanded like a magma, showing her what he was truly made of.”
The concept of dissolving margins with stay with me for a very long time. And the way that EF writes about the body? The psychosomatic landscape built out to attribute a heightened sense of every feeling in both Elena and Lila???? [explosion] [gunshot] [fireworks]
The entirety of their relationship can be summarised by that single line during Lilas wedding when she refers to Elena as her brilliant friend whilst all the while, from the moment the two are introduced, in our minds Lila is the brilliant friend. And the way they see each other and fail to see each other is (of course!!!) the inviolable strength of the novel.
“There, amid the violent explosions, in the cold, in the smoke that burned the nostrils and the strong odor of sulfur, something violated the organic structure of her brother, exercising over him a pressure so strong that it broke down his outlines, and the matter expanded like a magma, showing her what he was truly made of.”
The concept of dissolving margins with stay with me for a very long time. And the way that EF writes about the body? The psychosomatic landscape built out to attribute a heightened sense of every feeling in both Elena and Lila???? [explosion] [gunshot] [fireworks]
The entirety of their relationship can be summarised by that single line during Lilas wedding when she refers to Elena as her brilliant friend whilst all the while, from the moment the two are introduced, in our minds Lila is the brilliant friend. And the way they see each other and fail to see each other is (of course!!!) the inviolable strength of the novel.
The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu
3.75
Ling Taishi carried this on her back like a champ! It wasn’t perfect but I’m quite excited for the next one.
The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
One thing about me a fantasy saga specifically centred around one family??? I’m gonna enjoyyyyy.
If a book makes me shed tears immediately it’s 4.5 stars because the level of investment I had in these characters snuck up on me. This is one of those few stories where I think the author picked the main characters CORRECTLY. Sometimes it happens that there are characters who are more interesting or from which the story could’ve been told but getting Mamoru and Misaki’s POV (for the most part) was both big brained and actually an assault on my person.
I will maintain that the entry was clumsy and slightly off putting because I didn’t get to have the insane experience that was reading this until I gave it a second attempt.That being said when you get to the heart of the book - misaki! - there is no way not to be hooked.
The fight scenes imo were great. Well choreographed and easy to follow. Had me on the edge of my seat multiple times. Misaki is an icon. I will always respect a woman that has known and conquered regret. She is a woman that contains multitudes!!!! Little onion of a woman that she is. And it’s not just her but most characters that are featured are nuanced and loveable. Even characters like takeru who, at least 6 points in the book, I wanted to murder with my bare hands, grew on me. By the end I was like that’s a GOOD man savannah!
Also the girls who were marketing this as an adult avatar need to speak up Louder because they were right. The zutara/risaki complex was THUMPING. I gagged, I did. Overall it wasn’t perfect by any means but it was perfect for me.
Also in hindsight I definitely think SOK put me in a reading slump because I found it much harder to finish books after this. But who know s it could also have been the order of events in my little life that played a part too :0
If a book makes me shed tears immediately it’s 4.5 stars because the level of investment I had in these characters snuck up on me. This is one of those few stories where I think the author picked the main characters CORRECTLY. Sometimes it happens that there are characters who are more interesting or from which the story could’ve been told but getting Mamoru and Misaki’s POV (for the most part) was both big brained and actually an assault on my person.
I will maintain that the entry was clumsy and slightly off putting because I didn’t get to have the insane experience that was reading this until I gave it a second attempt.That being said when you get to the heart of the book - misaki! - there is no way not to be hooked.
The fight scenes imo were great. Well choreographed and easy to follow. Had me on the edge of my seat multiple times. Misaki is an icon. I will always respect a woman that has known and conquered regret. She is a woman that contains multitudes!!!! Little onion of a woman that she is. And it’s not just her but most characters that are featured are nuanced and loveable. Even characters like takeru who, at least 6 points in the book, I wanted to murder with my bare hands, grew on me. By the end I was like that’s a GOOD man savannah!
Also the girls who were marketing this as an adult avatar need to speak up Louder because they were right. The zutara/risaki complex was THUMPING. I gagged, I did. Overall it wasn’t perfect by any means but it was perfect for me.
Also in hindsight I definitely think SOK put me in a reading slump because I found it much harder to finish books after this. But who know s it could also have been the order of events in my little life that played a part too :0
The Six Deaths of the Saint by Alix E. Harrow
4.75
This was not what I expected it to be. Not sure why the girls were saying they were crying at this. Did think the theological allegory was very smart and strung out enough that it didn’t click until the last few pages when figurative language became literal? Yes. Did I cry? No. Did I think wow the use of repetition works here in such an intricate weaving of a broader narrative just shy of fatigue because of the short form? Yes.
Craft-wise, a novella masterclass.
Craft-wise, a novella masterclass.