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rainbowalcremie1995's reviews
4 reviews
Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang
I really enjoyed the magic system that was introduced in the book. Although the characters in the book may have to study for hours on end to master it, it wasn’t too complicated for a reader to understand.
I don’t really have an individual favorite character in this book, but some of my favorite parts were whenever Robin and his cohort were just hanging out and talking about their studies, and it made the things they went through together near the end of the book a lot more impactful. I feel like at times, the characters in this book work best when they’re bouncing off of other characters. I really liked Griffin as a foil to Robin, and Letty being the odd one out of her friend group. I was surprised at how much Robin grew as a character by the end as well. In the first half of the story, I found him a little passive, acting as a camera to the more interesting characters in the story. Now that I’ve finished the book, though, I think this flaw may have been intentional, and it makes it a lot more satisfying to see him come into his own by the end.
I think that the pacing could be a little awkward at times, and there were definitely parts of the book that I felt could have been arranged a little differently. For example, I thought that the Hermes Society being introduced so early in the story made certain reveals about Babel’s true nature a lot less impactful. In fact, I would say that a pretty big weakness of this book is that most of the plot twists very predictable.I saw Letty’s betrayal coming from a mile away, as I’m sure most readers did. I think that her POV chapter coming after the betrayal was also unnecessary, it didn’t add anything to her character that we didn’t already know.
In addition, it sometimes feels like the book is too afraid of subtext and has to make the themes explicit in both the main text and the many footnotes. Which is a shame, because there were a some good lines in this book where a member of the faculty or an older student would say something normal but extremely sinister, but very few of them were allowed to hang without a footnote butting in to say, “By the way, they just said something racist.” I guess not everyone reading this book will have the same background knowledge coming in to it, but I wish that the buildup to Babel not being as great as it seems on the surface had been more gradual.
Despite the book having a bit of a slow middle, I thought the last third of the book was pretty good. I was up until two in the morning yesterday just to see how it ended!I wish that the Hermes Society and the older students who were members got some more character development before they died. I am glad that Victoire got a little more character development near the end as she helps Robin start the strike. The progression of the strike and the descriptions of society breaking down as the result of one academic tower no longer maintaining the silver was well done, as was Robin’s final descent into violence that leads up to his death. At first, I was surprised that the strike ended tragically, with Robin and almost all of his allies in the tower sacrificing themselves to blow it up. However, it’s still a hopeful ending, and it probably would have been a little too neat of the strike had completely changed society overnight without any bloodshed.
I can’t judge this book on how well it works as a piece of historical fiction, as I’m not too familiar with the history of the Opium Wars, and I only speak English. As a fantasy novel, I can say that I had a fun time reading it, and although I think this book is a little too long for me to ever want to read the entire thing over again, I think it definitely earns four stars from me.
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
slow-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
4.0
Overall, this was an enjoyable book for people who want to read a fantasy story about academia that acknowledges the ways academic institutions can be both helpful and harmful to the societies they’re a part of.
I really enjoyed the magic system that was introduced in the book. Although the characters in the book may have to study for hours on end to master it, it wasn’t too complicated for a reader to understand.
I don’t really have an individual favorite character in this book, but some of my favorite parts were whenever Robin and his cohort were just hanging out and talking about their studies, and it made the things they went through together near the end of the book a lot more impactful. I feel like at times, the characters in this book work best when they’re bouncing off of other characters. I really liked Griffin as a foil to Robin, and Letty being the odd one out of her friend group. I was surprised at how much Robin grew as a character by the end as well. In the first half of the story, I found him a little passive, acting as a camera to the more interesting characters in the story. Now that I’ve finished the book, though, I think this flaw may have been intentional, and it makes it a lot more satisfying to see him come into his own by the end.
I think that the pacing could be a little awkward at times, and there were definitely parts of the book that I felt could have been arranged a little differently. For example, I thought that the Hermes Society being introduced so early in the story made certain reveals about Babel’s true nature a lot less impactful. In fact, I would say that a pretty big weakness of this book is that most of the plot twists very predictable.
In addition, it sometimes feels like the book is too afraid of subtext and has to make the themes explicit in both the main text and the many footnotes. Which is a shame, because there were a some good lines in this book where a member of the faculty or an older student would say something normal but extremely sinister, but very few of them were allowed to hang without a footnote butting in to say, “By the way, they just said something racist.” I guess not everyone reading this book will have the same background knowledge coming in to it, but I wish that the buildup to Babel not being as great as it seems on the surface had been more gradual.
Despite the book having a bit of a slow middle, I thought the last third of the book was pretty good. I was up until two in the morning yesterday just to see how it ended!
I can’t judge this book on how well it works as a piece of historical fiction, as I’m not too familiar with the history of the Opium Wars, and I only speak English. As a fantasy novel, I can say that I had a fun time reading it, and although I think this book is a little too long for me to ever want to read the entire thing over again, I think it definitely earns four stars from me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Xenophobia, Sexism, Racism, and Colonisation
Moderate: Slavery, Violence, War, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Torture, and Death
Minor: Terminal illness and Death of parent
Thirteen Storeys by Jonathan Sims
I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this book. I definitely liked it overall, but it took me a while to finish it. I bought the book a few months back, read the first few chapters, put it down for a bit when the pacing got a bit slow, and finally started over and finished the book over the last few weeks.
I have two chapters I would consider my favorites. The first is Carter’s chapter, which works as a great standalone story about an awful, awful person becoming a victim to something he created. Something I love about that chapter is thatDonna is basically working as intended and taking over his life, creating someone to be a better person in his place if he won’t do it himself . I feel like the chapter is even more timely in 2023 than it was in 2020, with ChatGPT and AI generated art being such hot topics. My other favorite chapter is Janek’s. His is closer to the end of the book, so it's more tied to the main plot. I love the imagery of him breaking into the middle of the building, seeing the pipes inside, and deciding to join the bodies he’d been following . Another part of the reason I like this chapter is that Janek feels more personally connected to the harm Tobias Fell has caused than some of the other characters. Janek went through a traumatic work place accident similar to the ones the ghosts he’s following were victims of, and I found that to be a stronger character motivation than the vague concept of people suffering somewhere else.
I feel like the ending of the book wrapped things up a little neatly, but I didn’t mind. I loved the scenes of all these different characters we’ve been in the heads of getting to interact with each other in a strange setting. It might have been sort of anticlimactic and convenient tohave the characters just use the ghosts they’ve been haunted by to each thematically beat Tobias to death, but it was still pretty fun . As a note, I was reading the ebook version and listening to the audiobook at the same time. I’d purchased both together, but the audiobook’s thirteenth chapter was different than the ebook in that the audiobook was told in present tense instead of past tense, and each character’s narration was in first person. I’m not sure if that change is strictly for the audiobook version or if there’s another ebook edition that also uses those changes. There were a few words and sentences added and subtracted in addition to the tense and POV changes, but overall, there weren’t any story changes, so you won’t be missing anything important regardless of which version you decide to read/listen to.
As a last aside, I (like everyone else) listened to the Magnus Archives podcast sometime before reading this book. I liked the podcast, but I never considered myself a huge fan of it, and I fell behind and never finished it, either. If you’re a big fan of the podcast, though, I will say this book is pretty similar in tone and themes, with both using the real world horrors of capitalism and class divides in addition to the supernatural elements.
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
tldr; The real ghosts were the capitalism we met along the way.
I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this book. I definitely liked it overall, but it took me a while to finish it. I bought the book a few months back, read the first few chapters, put it down for a bit when the pacing got a bit slow, and finally started over and finished the book over the last few weeks.
The fact that the novel consists of twelve different characters’ separate stories that all tie into an overall narrative that concludes in the thirteenth chapter is, in my opinion, both a strength and a weakness. When I was first reading the book, I had a lot of fun getting into the heads of different characters leading vastly different lives from each other. However, since the characters are largely separate from each other until the climax, it also felt like some revelations kept happening over and over. The book is not at all subtle with its anti-capitalist themes, and for certain characters, I felt like their chapters consisted more of reiterating those themes than focusing on the personal story of the character. The middle chapters struggled most with this balance, and was around where I’d taken a break from reading the first time I read this book. However, I feel that the chapters at the beginning and end of the book did a better job of giving its point of view character an actual arc in addition to contributing to the overall plot.
I have two chapters I would consider my favorites. The first is Carter’s chapter, which works as a great standalone story about an awful, awful person becoming a victim to something he created. Something I love about that chapter is that
I feel like the ending of the book wrapped things up a little neatly, but I didn’t mind. I loved the scenes of all these different characters we’ve been in the heads of getting to interact with each other in a strange setting. It might have been sort of anticlimactic and convenient to
As a last aside, I (like everyone else) listened to the Magnus Archives podcast sometime before reading this book. I liked the podcast, but I never considered myself a huge fan of it, and I fell behind and never finished it, either. If you’re a big fan of the podcast, though, I will say this book is pretty similar in tone and themes, with both using the real world horrors of capitalism and class divides in addition to the supernatural elements.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Blood, and Cannibalism
Moderate: Classism
Minor: Genocide, Suicide, Slavery, and Deadnaming
You probably listened to the Magnus Archives first. You know about what to expect.
Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-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
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Torture, and Police brutality
Moderate: Death and Gun violence
Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
I really wanted to like this book. For the first third or so, I would have given it three or four stars, but by the end, it became a book I couldn’t bring myself to recommend. Still, as much as it disappointed me, it had the potential to be a great book, and I would like to share what I enjoyed about it before I get into the flaws.
The pacing throughout the book was slow, but at the beginning, I didn’t mind so much because I liked the characters and ideas that were introduced. In the first paragraphs of the book, Cathy describes her childhood dreams of adventure, acknowledges the shortcomings of her imagination, and juxtaposes these childhood dreams to what she ends up finding in the faerie realm. I don’t want to get too much into the sibling relationship yet, but in the first part of the novel, I sympathized with Cathy for growing apart from her brother, and how their society’s gender roles played a part in allowing him to travel, while she had trouble finding her own role in society.
Sometimes the language of the book can be a little awkward, and there were a few descriptions I had to read more than once. However, I think that for the most part, the descriptive language worked well with the setting. Most of the novel is spent in Gethsemane, a castle with a complicated, dream-like layout and many secrets. While I would have loved to see more of Arcadia, I understand that for the purpose of the novel, the author was going for a claustrophobic atmosphere. That being said, my favorite parts of the novel were those glimpses of Arcadia outside of Gethsemane: the visitors to the masquerade, the marketplace, and the sea whale.
My favorite characters were also the fae side characters. While I thought Cathy’s development was alright in the beginning of the book, neither of the two main human characters were anywhere near as interesting as all of the minor fae characters. Much of the novel concerns theological discussions, and while I thought those could get a little long and repetitive at times, I always loved reading Benjamin’s questions and how he tried hard to be faithful even if the missionaries couldn’t quite explain the Bible’s contradictions. I also thought that Davenport’s conversations with Cathy were interesting, and I think that having one of Gethsemane’s main residents be a changeling did add to the unsettling atmosphere. Oddly enough, I also really liked the Queen. Sometimes, I thought that she was sort of funny, in a way. Her dress made out of bees was very cute. Also, the scene at the masquerade, in which she shows the “true forms” of the guests, was one of my favorite descriptions in the whole book (although what happens to Cathy in that scene also leads to the worst plot twist in the entire book, so I can’t call the entire scene good).
So far, I’ve mostly described what I enjoyed about the book. A woman goes to find her estranged brother, finds faerie land stranger than she would have thought, a beautiful queen wants to throw a party in their house, they have to entertain her even though she’s dangerous… All of that could have been a fine novel.
If only.
The rest of the review concerns heavy spoilers, but even if you don’t want to read this part, I would highly suggest looking at any content warnings before deciding to read this book yourself, and like I said, I overall can’t recommend this book despite the praise I’ve given it so far.
The second half of the book is where everything truly fell apart for me. Part of this is my fault for going into the novel with my own expectations. However, I also feel that the twist was unnecessary and ultimately detrimental to the characters, and there could have been far more interesting things to do with their relationship.
I knew this was going to be a book about a sister finding her brother. While I’m not the sort of person who thinks it’s bad to include a romance subplot in a book, I was interested in reading a book that was primarily concerned with a family relationship. Even before the reveal, I was already getting a little tired of Cathy constantly talking about how great her brother is, and was starting to get a little weirded out by how jealous she was every time a woman so much as looked at him. Of course, I thought that maybe the novel was going to paint Cathy as an overbearing sister who’s worried about growing apart from a family member, and I ignored many of the warning signs and excused them as the writer maybe not being the best at writing sibling relationships. So, getting hit with explicit incest about halfway through the book felt like a slap in the face to me.
There were so many things I hated about this subplot. First, Cathy and her obsession with her brother takes over the plot of the second half of the novel, and I had already thought the plot was getting a little too slow. Also, the reveal that Cathy is a changeling (or at least that she thinks she’s a changeling) is treated as some kind of get-out-of-incest-free card, and her constantly referring to Laon as “Catherine Helstone’s brother” in an attempt to distance herself didn’t help at all. She literally has memories of them growing up together, and her trying to justify the incest to him just made me start to hate her. The double reveal at the end that she wasn’t a changeling didn’t make me feel anything, partly because I’d spoiled myself on that already, and partly because for me, it didn’t change anything. This book is written in first person, and Cathy using what feels like the same three phrases to describe how handsome and… great?... her brother is was extremely uncomfortable. Laon was always a much better character when he was offscreen.
I think the worst part of the incest subplot was that it didn’t need to be there. As I said at the beginning, I think that this being a story about Cathy worrying about being estranged from a family member is just fine. Laon could have wanted to become a missionary for any non-incest related reasons. The Queen could have so many other ways of manipulating them. The Queen already did manipulate Cathy in an interesting way by having her kill Davenport. The incest wasn’t even manipulation on the Queen’s part, really. They already had these feelings before coming to Arcadia, and as I said before, I think that Cathy being a changeling doesn’t make that relationship any less gross. The incest subplot not only ruined Cathy’s character for me, but it also made me go from indifferent about Laon to hating him, and also made the Queen less interesting. It didn’t help that the parts of the book that weren’t about the incest were instead about theology, and while I knew that was a main focus of the book going in, most of the theological revelations at the end involve Cathy just having an epiphany and figuring everything out all at once. Which is a shame, because I liked the imagery of the moths, but the moths also feel like they were used because the author realized the book was almost over and needed the characters to find all of the answers.
I don’t have much to say about the final revelation, that Arcadia is hell and the Queen is Lilith. At that point, I just wanted the book to be over. I guess one thing I will say is that something I liked at the beginning was how pointless missionary work was shown to be, since Christianity seems at odds with the nature of the fae, but since the book ends with Laon and Cathy deciding to still bring the word to them, it feels like their time in Arcadia taught them nothing.
Anyway, like I said, I can’t recommend this book, but at the same time, part of me is glad that I read it. There was a pretty good gothic horror story about faeries somewhere in here, but it suffered from taking place at a single location and also being buried under a terrible incest plot. For all its flaws, I can’t say this book didn’t get me to think. The most painful reading experience is picking up a book that could have been so good, if not for the problems.
The pacing throughout the book was slow, but at the beginning, I didn’t mind so much because I liked the characters and ideas that were introduced. In the first paragraphs of the book, Cathy describes her childhood dreams of adventure, acknowledges the shortcomings of her imagination, and juxtaposes these childhood dreams to what she ends up finding in the faerie realm. I don’t want to get too much into the sibling relationship yet, but in the first part of the novel, I sympathized with Cathy for growing apart from her brother, and how their society’s gender roles played a part in allowing him to travel, while she had trouble finding her own role in society.
Sometimes the language of the book can be a little awkward, and there were a few descriptions I had to read more than once. However, I think that for the most part, the descriptive language worked well with the setting. Most of the novel is spent in Gethsemane, a castle with a complicated, dream-like layout and many secrets. While I would have loved to see more of Arcadia, I understand that for the purpose of the novel, the author was going for a claustrophobic atmosphere. That being said, my favorite parts of the novel were those glimpses of Arcadia outside of Gethsemane: the visitors to the masquerade, the marketplace, and the sea whale.
My favorite characters were also the fae side characters. While I thought Cathy’s development was alright in the beginning of the book, neither of the two main human characters were anywhere near as interesting as all of the minor fae characters. Much of the novel concerns theological discussions, and while I thought those could get a little long and repetitive at times, I always loved reading Benjamin’s questions and how he tried hard to be faithful even if the missionaries couldn’t quite explain the Bible’s contradictions. I also thought that Davenport’s conversations with Cathy were interesting, and I think that having one of Gethsemane’s main residents be a changeling did add to the unsettling atmosphere. Oddly enough, I also really liked the Queen. Sometimes, I thought that she was sort of funny, in a way. Her dress made out of bees was very cute. Also, the scene at the masquerade, in which she shows the “true forms” of the guests, was one of my favorite descriptions in the whole book (although what happens to Cathy in that scene also leads to the worst plot twist in the entire book, so I can’t call the entire scene good).
So far, I’ve mostly described what I enjoyed about the book. A woman goes to find her estranged brother, finds faerie land stranger than she would have thought, a beautiful queen wants to throw a party in their house, they have to entertain her even though she’s dangerous… All of that could have been a fine novel.
If only.
The rest of the review concerns heavy spoilers, but even if you don’t want to read this part, I would highly suggest looking at any content warnings before deciding to read this book yourself, and like I said, I overall can’t recommend this book despite the praise I’ve given it so far.
The second half of the book is where everything truly fell apart for me. Part of this is my fault for going into the novel with my own expectations. However, I also feel that the twist was unnecessary and ultimately detrimental to the characters, and there could have been far more interesting things to do with their relationship.
I knew this was going to be a book about a sister finding her brother. While I’m not the sort of person who thinks it’s bad to include a romance subplot in a book, I was interested in reading a book that was primarily concerned with a family relationship. Even before the reveal, I was already getting a little tired of Cathy constantly talking about how great her brother is, and was starting to get a little weirded out by how jealous she was every time a woman so much as looked at him. Of course, I thought that maybe the novel was going to paint Cathy as an overbearing sister who’s worried about growing apart from a family member, and I ignored many of the warning signs and excused them as the writer maybe not being the best at writing sibling relationships. So, getting hit with explicit incest about halfway through the book felt like a slap in the face to me.
There were so many things I hated about this subplot. First, Cathy and her obsession with her brother takes over the plot of the second half of the novel, and I had already thought the plot was getting a little too slow. Also, the reveal that Cathy is a changeling (or at least that she thinks she’s a changeling) is treated as some kind of get-out-of-incest-free card, and her constantly referring to Laon as “Catherine Helstone’s brother” in an attempt to distance herself didn’t help at all. She literally has memories of them growing up together, and her trying to justify the incest to him just made me start to hate her. The double reveal at the end that she wasn’t a changeling didn’t make me feel anything, partly because I’d spoiled myself on that already, and partly because for me, it didn’t change anything. This book is written in first person, and Cathy using what feels like the same three phrases to describe how handsome and… great?... her brother is was extremely uncomfortable. Laon was always a much better character when he was offscreen.
I think the worst part of the incest subplot was that it didn’t need to be there. As I said at the beginning, I think that this being a story about Cathy worrying about being estranged from a family member is just fine. Laon could have wanted to become a missionary for any non-incest related reasons. The Queen could have so many other ways of manipulating them. The Queen already did manipulate Cathy in an interesting way by having her kill Davenport. The incest wasn’t even manipulation on the Queen’s part, really. They already had these feelings before coming to Arcadia, and as I said before, I think that Cathy being a changeling doesn’t make that relationship any less gross. The incest subplot not only ruined Cathy’s character for me, but it also made me go from indifferent about Laon to hating him, and also made the Queen less interesting. It didn’t help that the parts of the book that weren’t about the incest were instead about theology, and while I knew that was a main focus of the book going in, most of the theological revelations at the end involve Cathy just having an epiphany and figuring everything out all at once. Which is a shame, because I liked the imagery of the moths, but the moths also feel like they were used because the author realized the book was almost over and needed the characters to find all of the answers.
I don’t have much to say about the final revelation, that Arcadia is hell and the Queen is Lilith. At that point, I just wanted the book to be over. I guess one thing I will say is that something I liked at the beginning was how pointless missionary work was shown to be, since Christianity seems at odds with the nature of the fae, but since the book ends with Laon and Cathy deciding to still bring the word to them, it feels like their time in Arcadia taught them nothing.
Anyway, like I said, I can’t recommend this book, but at the same time, part of me is glad that I read it. There was a pretty good gothic horror story about faeries somewhere in here, but it suffered from taking place at a single location and also being buried under a terrible incest plot. For all its flaws, I can’t say this book didn’t get me to think. The most painful reading experience is picking up a book that could have been so good, if not for the problems.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Incest
Moderate: Violence
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