sisa_moyo's reviews
195 reviews

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar

this book follows two agents from rival sides warring across time and space to make possible a certain future for their respective sides. Enemies on the battlefield, they begin a secret communication with treasonous implications through letters. 
This is set a very abstract yet detailed sci-fi world in which you need to embrace not understanding what is going on or what most of the words, the battles or the settings mean. This did make it a bit of work to settle my mind into at the start, but once the letters come through, you realise that this is about more than the war, and the world built. It is about communication between agent and agent, author and author as it stretches, interprets, creates new ways of lettering, of speaking through space and matter to another.
It is about time and cause and effect, with lots of banter, yearning and the most beautiful, jaw dropping, tearjerking lyrical prose.
This was a wonderful enjoyable tender book, and I will be thinking about it always. 

Eclipse by Keiichirō Hirano

This short novel follows a Dominican friar in the late 1400s as he embarks on a journey from Paris to Florence in search of a full manuscript of a certain pre-Christian philosophical text of which he only has a partial text. On his way, he travels to a certain village in which he becomes transfixed with an alchemist, his work and the strange calamities that befall the small village.

The novel has a very interesting premise, and the writing was so new and interesting to experience. As the text is written in the form of the narrator’s memoir, we are within the main character Nicholas' mind and thoughts as he contemplates the various happenings in the village and thinks through them from the lens of his teachings and convictions as a theologist and a devout Christian. The story keeps you well engaged as you are eager to know the cause of all the effects, and the writing at some points was sprinkled with these extremely profound and philosophical musings.

However, I do feel that the archaic writing style of the text, while interesting and with a certain flow to it, was very heavy and the sentences so long and run-on that I was more focused on handling the language. This meant that, especially in the beginning, the story was rather slow. Again, in the beginning there was a quite a lot of theological jargon and contemplations that I, as someone who has not done theology, did not fully understand. The introduction which I hoped would introduce and explain these theological ideas, schools of thought, and various philosophical ideas did not do so. It instead gave spoiler filled synopsis of the most intriguing part of the plots even before one has read the book and would be best read at the end.

It was overall an interesting book to get into, with various ruminations on faith and Christianity, pagan traditions and the religious climate in 15th century France, both in academia and in society. But, if you are not well versed in theology, a lot of the narrator’s contemplations and philosophising may well go over your head.
[e-ARC courtesy of Netgalley and the publisher]

We Do Not Part by Han Kang

I thoroughly enjoyed this, even though I feel like maybe some of the symbolism went over my head. Han Kang, through memories and nightmares, takes us the gruesome events of mass violence and atrocities against defenseless unarmed people on Jeju Island in the late 1940s-50s.
As always, like with Human Acts, these atrocities are explored not from the confrontations and the clashes and fighting - but in the humans, the survivors, those left behind, the mass graves then and now. Through dreams, nightmares, memories, and oral accounts Kang brings to bare a dark, tumultuous time in Korea. It's a practice and a call to remember, to not let the details, the bones history, the memories be washed away with the passing of time. She is able to be so gentle and humane with violent histories, and with memory and trauma. This alongside the way she explores and dwells in a season and the effect on the person, the subject matter. The winter, the wind, the snow blanketing everything.
I remember thinking that all of her previous works were so vastly different in subject matter and voice that it almost felt like 4 different authors produced them. But this book puts a literary connection in my mind between all those works in various ways - takes her voice from each and blends it with lyrical prose and a nation’s reckoning and produces this masterpiece. 
I think if you enjoyed Human Acts of course, and Greek Lessons and oddly Bae Suah's Untold Night and Day, in how it explores and traverses the opposing season - summer, and in the feverish, hallucinations of seeing what's maybe not there) you will enjoy this one. 

Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever by Martin Dugard, Bill O'Reilly

challenging informative medium-paced

Killing Lincoln chronicles the last few weeks of Lincoln’s life and the state of American politics at that time. From the North-South divide, the hatred of Lincoln owing to the emancipation proclamation to the detailed end of the Civil war between Grants Union forces and Lee’s Confederate forces. 

As always O’Reiley And Dugard manage to take some time in American and or world history and factually and artfully weave it into a thrilleresque narrative of an assassination of some key historical figure. Killing Lincoln is no exception as the authors are able to build up to the final moments of the president’s life and lay out the various conspiracies on the plot to end it that still hang to this day - from the various players who’s involvement was indisputable to those that history suspects. 

And while I felt that quite a lot of time was spent detailing the end of the Civil War, and he cat and mouse between Grant and Lee, overall it was a thoroughly informative and enjoyable listen me. It would be too for those interested in history generally, American history especially, and the life of Lincoln at Civil War’s end particularly. I also enjoyed listening to the audiobooks in this series as they are read by the author Bill O’Reiley who masterfully delivers each line and chapter as if it were a plot twist in some fictional work. 

The Red Years: Forbidden Poems from Inside North Korea by Bandi

In the Red Years, Bandi presents poems that present life in the totalitarian state of North Korea and the Worker's Party, from the trials of the arduous march to state violence against its own people, hopes of reunification, the death of Kim Il-Sung and the dream of a liberated North Korea. 
These are very short, beautiful poems about life in North Korea, the dreams and conflictions of those within the state. They are evocative poems that call the reader to listen to Bandi's dream of a free North Korea through themes of freedom, and birds in flight and freedom as love juxtaposed with a desolate, cold and frozen North. 
The first half features more political charged poems directly critical of the regime and I found that I enjoyed these more than the last 2 chapters. While I enjoyed and understood these poems than others - overall, I think they were pretty understandable and digestible poems, not too complex. 
I do feel that for most poems, in order to truly understand the metaphors for an indepth analysis and understanding of the poems, one may need to have more than a general knowledge of North Korea. For example, an understanding of the causes and effects of the ardous march, some details of Kim Il-Sung's cult of personaliity, the songbun class system and the Chollima movement. While not necessary, I think, I think it would help in better understanding and connecting to the poems as some of these crucial details are not mentioned or explained in the notes. 
Overall, I really enjoyed this collection of poems. 
(Also wish the notes were put as footnotes along with the respective poems instead of endnotes because being at the end of the book, one wouldn't know they're there when reading the poems. And one won't know which poems actually have notes and which don't.) 

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba, Vol. 9 by Koyoharu Gotouge

Start of entertainment district arc with hashira tengen uzui. It was very flashy! 

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba, Vol. 8 by Koyoharu Gotouge

End of Muzen Train Arc and intro to a new Hashira. 
Never bring up volume 8 to me ever. This vol on Rengoku will never bring me to tears and I will never be well. 

Remnants of Filth: Yuwu (Novel) Vol. 5 by Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou

This was such a slog to get through. For about 50% of the book nothing new or interesting happened, it was just Guxi being Guxi instead Mang being experimented on. Then it was a war I didn’t care about for a Chonghua I didn’t particularly care for in the name of an emperor I could care less about. 
It was very lukewarm for me, nothing especially enthralling happened, and even though there’s only 2 volumes left I’m strongly considering DNFing this. 
The characters now feel stagnant, and the plot too stretched out to be held together by any thick plot across all the volumes, such that each book feels like filler words for volume 7. 

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Vol. 7 by Koyoharu Gotouge

The beginning of the Mugen Train Arc with our intro to the flame Hashira Rengoku. It’s was good. 

Remnants of Filth: Yuwu (Novel) Vol. 4 by Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou

The first 25 to 40 percent of this book was so boring and slow and difficult to get through with the search for the Bat Island queen and whatever, and had the most, no doubt, unnecessary and frankly bare horrible smut scene just there as a jumpscare. 
But then we were back to Chonghua and the plot began to pick up and move along and it was really interesting as near decade old secrets involving Gu Mang and the emperor are revealed. 
It was good and engaging and eager to get to the next volume as Gu Mang’s memories begin to deteriorate yet again.