valetparkering's reviews
262 reviews

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

4.0

Cis dude quirky, but I really enjoyed it. I'm a sucker for meticulously planned schemes

Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang

medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This was extremely readable, and I regret having put off Wang's work for so long.

I was really engaged with the story. The first chapter did just what it needed to do, since for most of the book we're in Sciona's perspective. I had my theories about the magic system

which, given that I knew the author was inspired by Fullmetal Alchemist, was a bit easy to deduce. That revelation scene was still so good. The magic system as a metaphor for colonization might be a bit heavy handed but it's also almost literally true. The blood of marginalized peoples power the imperial core.

It was really fascinating watching Sciona's development throughout the novel. It felt more realistic to see her continue to struggle with her ingrained beliefs. All the way up to the end, even when she means well, she gives the people of her society the benefit of the doubt and discounts Thomil's input on how things will play out. Similarly I really enjoyed Sciona and Thomil's philosophical discussions on intent and justice, and I liked seeing it come up in other ways in the narrative.

I think Bright Haven was better than Babel partially because it felt like we engaged with the magic system so much more. In Babel the magic system functioned better because of colonization (distance between translation increasing the potency of the spellblock) but it didn't come across as an intrinsic part of the system itself. In Bright Haven, the magic didn't have to be used as it was (see the Kwen witches pre-Tiran) but its use in the novel can only exist because of Tiran's colonial position. Simply, it just feels more integrated in the world. Similarly, the characters in Bright Haven feel like they are engaging more directly with the themes of colonization. Sciona is repeatedly allowed to be wrong without the narrative stopping for a footnote to tell you that she said something insensitive. 

I have some reservations about this book and it's place within a Euro/USAmerican tradition. Sciona is a member of the colonizing power and Thomil can be seen as serving as her conduit to her personal enlightenment. Secondly,

there is a small romance subplot between Thomil and Sciona, which could fit into a colonizer romance trope and feels a bit squicky to me

. Sciona also could easily fall into the white-savior trope. I think the worst of this was averted.

Sciona doesn't feel 100% redeemed at the end of the novel, she doesn't get any rewards for not being racist anymore, her actions lead the Kwen to be able to act for themselves. For the romance, it was very minor and I believe there was a line from Thomil that they wouldn't be able to be together in the world they currently inhabit. Thomil makes the ultimate decision to activate Sciona's final spell.

But this might be me applying a generous reading to it. Nevertheless, it did dull some of the five-star shine, hence the 4.5 rating.

I did really enjoy this book , and I can't wait to read Sword of Kaigen soon.

House Of Suns by Alastair Reynolds

3.5

I love sci-fi books that make me feel like an ant. I love the subtle horror/sadness that comes with relativistic travel, even if the characters are so used to it that it barely registers. 

I thought something more was going to come out of the Palatial storyline at the beginning of each section. Even if not directly, at least getting some meaning by juxtaposition. Like the robots in the main timeline being compared to the suits of armor imbued with a soul?. Obviously Palatial carries the thread of organic vs machine but I thought there would be some convergence of the robots needing to incorporate the shatterlings. I guess it kind of did

with Purslane being protected by Hesperus at the end

but if it was meant to be foreshadowing my only reaction is "yeah okay? and?"

I liked how all the little bits (around the ambassador, the spirit of the air, Purslane being a hoarder, etc) came back, but that's just a bare minimum of competent plotting. 

One of my favorite parts about sci-fi is looking at the author chooses to tweak social norms. Unfortunately, Reynolds decided to be boring and keep a two gender model- even for the robots which he explicitly says are not strictly male or female but conveniently all of the robots we meet are either or. In the case of Cascade and C- (I'm blanking on the other robot's name, apologies) they happen to be the epitome of femininity and masculinity? I'm not saying it's bad, just that it's boring.

The First Machine at the end might be different, I'll have to go back and check but I'm pretty sure Reynolds uses he

I do think it's really funny that the main language is called Trans. As reparations I'm headcanoning that all of the male clones are trans.

 Additionally, Purslane was a very passive character. Almost every decision that moved the plot along was made by Campion. He wanted to go to the Centaur world, he wanted to see the Ashtega guy afterwards, he wanted to go to the reunion system (where Purslane waited for him while he was rescuing the survivors), he chases after Silver Wings in the last third of the book. Purslane gets kidnapped, follows Hesperus' directions,

and is protected by him at the end.

Purslane falls into a caretaker role repeatedly. She is the one pushing for Hesperus to be healed by the Spirit of the Air, and she is the one

keeping the knowledge of the opener, and the full knowledge of the First Machine genocide until Campion gets to Andromeda.

To be clear, I don't think this was an intentional statement by the author, but it's part of a larger media landscape. 

Clearly from my star rating, I did like this book. The shortcomings listed above are frustrating, but it didn't ruin my fun. I really enjoyed Hesperus as a character. Unfortunately I don't think this one is going to stick with me for very long. 

Recognising the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad

5.0

I'm not smart enough to explain how good this is.

Hip-Hop Is History by Questlove

3.75

I enjoyed listening to this, even when I was considerably lost. The sections that catch up to Questlove's entry into the industry tended to be more comprehensible to me, though whether this was due to my marginal knowledge of 90's rap (compared to the decades previous) or due to Questlove himself slowing down and taking more time to give context to the acts he was covering, I'm not sure. 

Especially in the early sections of the book, I don't think Questlove quite lives up to his aim in the intro to "not try to be the smartest person in the room". While I don't think the book necessarily needs to come down to my level (as someone who is just getting started diving into the genre with any intention), the first decade in particular felt like a lot of names all in a row with very little time to understand their place in the narrative. 

His passion does come through clearly, though, and reading this made me excited to have some broader context for what I've been listening to.

Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

4.5

This was really good, and considerably less gross then Brainwyrms. 

For both books, I especially enjoyed the parts that dip into that stream of consciousness style. It serves to highlight how interconnected these different expressions of fascism are (and how transphobia operates in Brainwyrms).

I also enjoyed the use of second person to implicate the reader in these systems as well.

The epilogue was suitably bittersweet, if a bit uneven. I wish we had seen some- maybe not resolution but actualization?- of Alice's recovery from the House like we did with Ila. Their situations are different, obviously. In the epilogue, Ila claims an identity that she's been suppressing the whole time whereas Alice is being bigoted towards a group she's not in the text  intending to be a part of. And I'm not saying she needs to be cured of her antisemitism, but rather not addressing it leaves her character arc feeling less complete than Ila's and maybe more dismissive of antisemitism than transphobia. 

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

3.0

A little more muddled than the first one just because it has to handle two almost entirely separate plot lines.

The emotional development of Scarlet's plot really suffered from starting so close to Cinder's. Because both plots are starting just a day or two since Cinder was arrested in Book 1, Scarlet and Wolf don't have time to really get to know one another. It definitely doesn't help when Meyer points out in the text that they've only known each other for a handful of days. Even giving them a couple of weeks like Cinder and Kai had would have gone a long way into making their feelings towards one another more tangible.

I'm also not a huge fan of the alpha wolf romance thing in general (feels really gender essentialist on top of the scientific inaccuracy) but the line at the end "are you asking me to be your alpha female?" just about ended me.

I hope the next books slow down a little. I feel like for all the action, we only learned a little bit more about the political plot and a lot of space was taken up by catching characters up to their missing plot points.

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

3.5

Dark, atmospheric, bloody.

People who don't like to learn things are having a horrible time

A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

3.5

I liked the voice and the slow lurking dread, though I was taking psychic damage every time an NC thing was mentioned. 

The narrator for the audiobook made the gardener sound geriatric when I think he's only supposed to be 40 or so.

The Sun and the Void by Gabriela Romero Lacruz

2.5

This was, more than anything, disappointing. The writing on a line level was stilted and awkward. The characters were inconsistent. The world and magic system was vague. I could see lines that were inserted after a round of editing asking the author to be more clear. 

I could occasionally see the character arcs the author intended but overall the book was so boring and repetitive that everything felt so flat