Roisin
It was a totally different experience to read this whole book of poems than to read scattered lines of it on Tumblr.
I have to admit, I'm not really the most profound appreciator of poetry so I'm not the best person to judge the quality of this. I was a little lost through some of the poems, others moved me to tears.
In a lot of ways, this book feels like a sequel to The Raven Cycle to me. Not the sense that it follows that story but it's like “Summer Sons” is the true heir to the version of magic, friendship, and sexuality that The Dream Thieves had. I mean there is a whole group of friends that reminds me of Kavinsky's pack and the characters feel like hybrids of that story too. It also has a lot of themes and settings in common. Southern setting? Check! Horror? Check! Posh academic setting? Check! Car-racing as a metaphor for repressed sexual desires? Check! Magical boys? Check! Complicated friendships? Check!
And that is just pointing out the most blatant similarities. This was the book I was expecting from CDTH, to be honest. (Not that I didn't love CDTH but it was a surprise how detached from TRC it was) For that reason, I really enjoyed reading this. It filled the TRC shaped hole in my heart for a little while. The only thing that held it back was that the friendships were not as awesome as TRC and as a lover of interesting depictions of friendships I missed that here. Towards the end, it gets better but it felt like too little too late.
It wasn't as scary as I had thought it would be. In fact, I found humor to be the lingering impression from the book. To be fair, I laughed at the most inappropriate places, like when the main character had an identity crisis about his actual dynamic with his best friend, Eddie.
I had a little trouble with the writing style. The grammar and syntax were actually really hard to follow for me and I found myself rereading sentences over and over until I understood what they were saying. That's probably what holds me back from giving it a 5 star.
Overall, the story was intriguing and it carries this sadness from both grief and regret for not seizing the day and all that. I liked that.
“But the sparrow still falls.”
Is it better to be a macabre but empathic voyeur to suffering or is it better to not exist? That's what this story comes down to but the answer is rather vague. I have an answer for it. I think a significant number of people on earth will dislike that answer and take offense.
This is perhaps one of the most amazing and strange novels I have ever read. I was completely transfixed by it and I couldn't stop reading while also dreading what was to come. It's worth noting that there's a lot of religious baggage attached to this book and depending on the reader's personal views one might be more or less lenient towards it. I declare my utter adoration for this book by putting my personal opinions aside and only enjoying the map of events and ideas drawn by the book. It was brilliant. Almost a visceral experience. The use of linguistics and language, the characterizations, the development of an entire planet, it was all done beautifully.
What a harrowing experience though. If I'm being cheeky, I would say this book is such a good cautionary tale for why we should not go to another planet. Ever. For whatever reason!
If I put the jokes aside, I would say this is a sublime science-fiction work that manages to gnaw at some dark corners of the mind and exposes the shortcoming of “being” while maintaining an engaging storyline.
Plus, last time I read a book with a priest in a significant role, I developed a severe phobia towards them so the fact that Emilio Sandoz is now one of my favorite characters says a lot about the damage control this book managed to perform. (I do have a soft spot for linguists, so maybe that did it too!)
Warning for sexual assault content.
I was initially a bit hesitant to read this because the last book I read with Briseis as a prominent character was The Song of Achilles and I was worried that the depiction of the dynamic between Achilles and Briseis here would be ...somehow upsetting?
I had nothing to worry about though. Thankfully this book leans into my long-standing dislike for Achilles and portrays a very honest and visceral dynamic between a war prisoner and the person who destroyed her life and then uses her as a bed slave.
I really enjoyed reading this book. The writing style is mature, simple, and precise. It captures the complex spectrum of emotions that Briseis goes through from grief, trauma, to finding the will to survive. We see a very de-glamourized version of the Trojan war here that really leans into the unfairness and the savagery of the attack on the city.
As a Team Troy, this book was a very satisfying read.
I have to mention though, Achilles and his melodrama still end up taking a good portion of the narrative and this is even acknowledged by Briseis herself, who sees this as Achilles' story and herself as still trapped as a side character in his grand epic. It's true. While the book pays much more attention to the women and children who are victims of the brutal war, the narrative still moves on the axis of Achilles' whims.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading this. It's a different way of telling this old story and if you are not fundamentally offended by people reimaging old myths and stories, then you might enjoy this book too.
I inhaled this book! I always say there aren't any good Persephone and Hades retellings out there, they just never quite do it for me. WELL, THIS ONE DID IT!
It was fresh and yet it had the essence of the story. The romance is really cute, it's hilarious, the subplots are engaging and the art is the prettiest thing ever.
I have to say, the book did not live up to the hype around it. The novel is restrained to a very specific cultural setting, time, and experience but is otherwise about absolutely nothing.
All of that aside, I actually really enjoyed reading this book.
It was well-written enough for me to be really endeared by what is communicated in it and I did really like the representation of friendship in the book.
In fact, if I have to say what this book is about, I'd say it's about friendship, about finding a kindred spirit in this world despite everything else, (Also a lot of dramatic commentary on Brexit which...eh okay?!) and modern society is going towards destroying the opportunities for this international, timeless meetings to happen.
I enjoyed it, but I won't be reading the other seasonal novels if their content is in the same vein as this one.
I don't even know why I read this book. I knew I was going to hate it before I started it (which was why I didn't read it for a long time) but then I guess I wanted to be sure or something so I started reading it and for a moment in the beginning I thought I might like it but NOPE! I did in fact hate this book.
The two stars are because of the beginning and also the writing is not terrible and it did make me think a lot so it wasn't a total waste of time, just not for me. (I also like this one line that resonated a lot with me but the book made me really angry after that and I forgot what the line was. Pity)
Between this and fifty shades though, I don't know if anyone can convince me that practicing bdsm is, under any circumstances, not abusive. Seriously, people keep saying this got it wrong and that got it wrong, but all I still see is just effed-up dynamics. (sidenote: I have seen it executed well in non-eng novels, to be fair)
Anyway, I don't want to complain more. I just didn't like it. It wasn't for me.
I was so looking forward to reading this that I held it to an unrealistically high standard. It was a good read and I really enjoyed it and Atwood's voice is always very idiosyncratic and enjoyable but I was a little underwhelmed. The ending felt like it was attached to the story. It sat a bit awkwardly for me even though I liked the theory proposed there. It was just framed oddly?
Well, Let this be my last read of 2020! A bit of a break of tradition but I guess it's already 2021 somewhere!
Amazing, loved this. Cardan was getting more interesting with each book but this one makes him positively cute! The stories were so pretty and thematically cohesive too.
The drawings were gorgeous.
I DID IT! I finally finished reading this!
First things first: This book is nothing like The raven cycle. Style-wise I would say All the crooked saints is a closer relative to The Raven Cycle than this book is. Plot-wise it's also a totally different story thematically. Even though the books have the Lynch brothers in common, the struggles of the characters are very removed from that series. I think a person could easily read this book without having any knowledge of what came before, though knowing all that was nice too. Like seeing little throwbacks were nice.
So...if you look at how long I've been reading this, you might be able to tell...I didn't love this? Which was something that I became somewhat worried about just weeks before the book arrived and I started to think about all the book series reboots that I didn't care for in the past year. Partially, this long prolonged reading was because I got my book too late and my Uni started and then a freaking worldwide pandemic struck and I just became emotionally and mentally too busy to read this particular book. (And let's not talk about summer!)
Another reason was that, I didn't love Carmen's POV(That's a lie I F*CKING HATED HER!).
I just hated that whole plotline with the evil murder-committee so much. It struck a chord with me; all the self-righteous murderous cults business of it all. It reminded me of all violent groups around the world who think they have a right to kill people because they are “chosen” to “save the world”. Some context: I got my book a few weeks after US almost started World war III in January 2020 so you see I was especially salty and that is a unique situation that might not have bothered me had I gotten my book in 2019! (no I would've still hated her!)
I would have preferred having more Lilian chapters but Farooq-lane was a particular displeasure to push through and it's the main reason why I didn't want to pick up the book because every time one of her chapters showed up, I just didn't want to read that. I wish she wasn't in the book. Or her chapters weren't. All of hers and the other psych-murderers.
Anyway, that aside, I loved the other new characters. It was a bit of an anticlimactic read. I kept waiting for something to happen but it was all in limbo. For most of the book, characters are just going from one place to another and it seemed a bit lost, like they couldn't wait to get to the second book where the real story starts either. I think this was definitely an introductory book. It doesn't give you much. It just prepares you for the next one. I don't love this in book series. I like to love every book separately but ...I mean, it had Ronan? I love Ronan...so much. ._.
I am probably going to read the next one. Just not immediately, maybe.
