trilbynorton's reviews
256 reviews

The Last Unicorn: Deluxe Edition by Peter S. Beagle

5.0

The Last Unicorn is a book filled with magic. Yes, there is a unicorn and a magician and a kingdom under a curse. But there is also magic in the smallest details. Minutes crawl over a character like worms. A road rushes those walking upon it. Night coils like a snake in the streets of a town. The towers of a castle stalk the sky. On the surface the story is about a unicorn searching for the rest of her kind, and various humans' attempts to possess her (in one form or another). But it is also about the magic and wonder that can be found everywhere, if you just have patience, open your eyes, and know where to look.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

1.0

I went into this with high hopes, having read Murakami's 1Q84 and enjoyed the author's mixture of everyday mundanity and surreal fantasy. But I was sorely disappointed by Kafka on the Shore. I can't tell if it's the English translation or Murakami's style in this book, but I found the prose and dialogue agonisingly awkward to read. Dull descriptions of characters' every action sit alongside cod philosophy. One character says "man alive" and "Jeez Louise" more than any actual human being has ever said those phrases, and the rest of the dialogue is equally tone deaf. And it's a bizarrely sexual book, with several embarrassing sex scenes, one of them literally incestuous, which were supposed to think is fine, apparently. There's an excruciating scene featuring shrill feminist stereotypes, and one instance of graphic animal cruelty which serves no narrative purpose. This is clearly supposed to a profound coming of age story, but whatever meaning the book has is lost beneath clunky writing and forced quirkiness.

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

5.0

This is definitely one of those "As relevant now..." books. Through the eyes of Dana, a contemporary black woman (the book is set in 1976 and first published in 1979) as she travels back in time to the antebellum American south, we see a first-hand account of slavery, slaves, and slaveowners. The thing about the book which struck me the most is how it connects the past and the present. Dana is called back to the past by one of her ancestors, a white slaveowner named Rufus, and through their complex relationship we see how the past creates the present; how we need to accept what happened without losing sight of how terrible it was and how we can't let it happen again.

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

3.0

The first gothic novel is, understandably, not quite as gothic as what would follow. There's a foreboding castle, an ancient curse, and spooky goings-on (mostly centred around various bits of a giant suit of armour which keeps turning up to frighten characters), but this is mostly scheming or lovestruck nobles running around and yelling at each other. Despite being written in the late 1700s, Walpole (who frames the book as a translation of a Middle Ages Italian story) uses antiquated language, and I did quite enjoy the needlessly verbose prose and the sheer number of exclamation points in the dialogue. Still, I'd have liked a bit more of those spooky goings-on.

The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec

4.0

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting with this book, but what I wasn't expecting was a basically a novelisation of Ragnarok, the Norse end of days. But with a twist! Instead of being written from the usual perspective of the Aesir (the Norse gods), Genevieve Gornichec instead tells the story from the perspective of Angrboda, the supposedly evil witch who births three monsters with a pivotal role in the twilight of the gods. And I am totally here for it. Think Maleficent for Vikings.

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

3.0

I wanted to like this more than I did. The reason I didn't is that it feels incomplete. Not narratively - there's a beginning, a middle, and an end - but descriptively. I found it difficult to form an image of the setting as the prose has very little in the way of detail on environments, decor, etc. It's set in a spaceship, so at first I was imagining lots of steel, but then something will be described as wood-panelled and I was thrown. It might seem like a minor complaint, but it made it hard for me to become immersed in the story.

In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan

2.0

I don't think that I, a 34-year-old aromantic asexual, am the target audience for this romantic teen fantasy.

If, unlike me, you are the target audience, prepare for many, many pages of teen soap opera romance and surprisingly little actual fantasy.

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

4.0

As with all good SF, this is a series of questions. How would the Tower of Babel actually have been built? What if golems formed part of Enlightenment thinking? How does language affect how we perceive time?

The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz

4.0

Time travelling feminists! If those words get you even a little excited, then I highly recommend Annalee Newitz's intersectional sci-fi screed. In an alternative history in which ancient time machines embedded in half a billion year old rock have made time travel common place, men's rights activists are attempting to alter the timeline to permanently subjugate women, and those time travelling feminists are fighting back. Newitz combines some fairly hard SF, historical research, feminist theory, and some genuine emotional oomph into a novel that has perhaps become even more relevant in the mere two years since it was published.

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark

4.0

Post-colonial fantasy in which creatures from pre-modern folklore have returned to early-20th century Egypt and allowed the country to gain independence from the European empires. Clark weaves issues of feminism, race, and the price of progress into what is essentially a fantasy detective story. His three previous short stories in this universe aren't necessary to understand the novel, but are definitely recommended.