Zach
Well-written, well-researched, concise, thoughtful and extremely readable.
Smith and Mac do not flinch and they pull no punches. Whether or not you agree with their thesis, their analysis of the current regimes is cogent and solidly backed up, and their analytical framing on labor rights and labor law's affect on sex workers is one that is both highly necessary and sorely neglected elsewhere.
DNF. I barely got to page 80. I don't know if it's the characters or the pacing or what, but even though it's p much everything I like (urban fantasy murder mystery in academia with a biracial Sephardi protag? Holy fuck) I just could not convince myself to care about Alex or Darlington or most of the other recurring characters.
I'm not a self-help or therapeutic book reader. Theory? Politics? History? Sex? Sure. How to unf*ck yourself... less so. But I backed the Kickstarter because zines are cool, and the book was so small and friendly-looking.
I don't think I have fallen for a book so deeply and so quickly before. I was recommending it to my doctor and buying it for my library by the time I was done.
It is written in easy to read, up-beat prose, but don't let that fool you. Harper is asking for us to do some serious work. Some of it is easy, a lot of it is difficult, but but I had a surprising number of “a-ha” moments for a book that clicks in at under 200 pages.
It's worth multiple reads.
So. The overarching metaplot is still fascinating to me— I have a bunch of theories about Maeve and where she is. Hooks from earlier books keep paying off.
That said, every bit of book focused on Gillian and Toby's relationship makes me mad enough to stop reading. Toby's self-centered desperation to reconnect with her estranged biological daughter reminds me of all of my friends who have had to forcefully cut off ties with a parent, or who have had parents show up years late. The narrative seems to support this idea that because they're a biological relation, Gillian is doing something wrong by putting boundaries in place. She asks for Toby not to be referred to as her “mother” and is treated as though she said she hated Toby's guts. She says that she's done with being used as a pawn and wants Toby to leave her alone— and the narrative sees nothing wrong with Toby immediately ignoring the boundary and sending a boy who may as well be Toby's adopted son to talk to her. It's nearing the edge of what I'd call “harassment” if not “abuse”.
The murder mystery wasn't up to par either. The whole Isla Chase murder and reveal are treated as barely a c-plot, and the reasons as well as method aren't treated with much respect. It felt more like a mystery being thrown in because the Toby books are supposed to be about mysteries, but it doesn't mesh with the rest of the plot. (And the reveal focused so fucking hard on Toby's feeeeeeeeeeeeelings about Gillian that she barely notices a man grieving so hard he was in a murderous berserker rage. The fuck.)
I have two quibbles, neither of which docked the book very much— first, it's a lot more dense than I was expecting (not bad, just more), and second, I really wish there'd been more follow-up with the kids other than Rachel because theory is good, but as a trans adult I want to see how the theoretical impacts the practicality of young trans life.
I picked this one up with glee because I love Ortberg's writing. The short stories were as tense and dense as I was expecting, but some of the choices– especially where the adaptation is based on fusion with other, more different stories– didn't quite work for me.
Some stories were made stronger by the fusion (I cannot shake the feeling of dread left by “Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend, Mr Toad”), but others never quite solidified into a coherent narrative (“The Thankless Child”, “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors”), leaving me with fleeting emotional sensations but no strong impact. Still, Ortberg was plainly at his best when re-considering of the foundations of the original work, and digging out the horrific elements displayed within. Both “The Rabbit” (based on The Velveteen Rabbit) and “The Daughter Cells” (based on The Little Mermaid) are deadly inspired.
God, I tried SO hard. The prose was decent, but the characterization felt flat– and if you are going to make Ariel use sign language maybe keep that plot point around. And plot was just... Why is Ursula doing Any Of That? At least give her some personality beside flat villainy. “I want to send this country to war” OKAY WHY. Give My Girl some decent motivation or S O ME TH I N G.Honestly, the entire time, I was just wishing I was rereading [b:The Mermaid's Daughter 30531543 The Mermaid's Daughter Ann Claycomb https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1484016287s/30531543.jpg 51057146]
You have no idea how much I wanted to like this book. A fascinating premise and an interesting mystery with a host of colorful suspects? Sign me up. But the pacing was off, that characters were either cardboard cut outs, unlikeable, or both and the mystery itself fell flat. I nearly gave up multiple times (especially since the narrative never took issue with the homophobia and sexism— you can write your main character being a period-appropriate bigot without the narrative taking it at face value).
It gets two stars because the conclusion of the story was satisfactory, but I can't bring myself to give it any more than that.
Call it 3.5 stars
I had Philosophical Differences with Toby and with the narrative— let's just say, I really hope Seanan is intentionally sidelining the humans because Miranda appears to be my bias and I feel like the POVs are giving her short shrift. Also sometimes the narrative's take on mommy issues made me break out in hives a bit.
But it's a compelling story and I read it in about 24 hours, so I can't complain about the plot or the pacing. As always, Seanan McGuire is a master at writing a tight story that keeps you turning pages, whatever my personal nitpicks are about the use of themes.
And, just because it annoyed the shit out of me, can I just note that San Francisco hasn't used metal garbage cans in decades?
I was keenly aware of not being the audience for this book– Deloria's intent was clearly to convince a native audience of an ancient cosmic connection and set of abilities that have been lost. As an outsider, my inherent lack of connection with his thesis made it a difficult read.
On an anthropological level the book is fascinating and impeccable sourced. But the credulous tone Deloria takes towards the anecdotes he recounts (using someone's “impeachable character” as reason to take stories at completely face value, for instance) rubbed me the wrong way. There were times when glaring holes in his arguments got on my nerves– for example, stories where the storyteller had every reason to lie or fabricate are completely glossed over– but, again, I wasn't someone he was trying to convince in the first place.
A primary note, since this seems to be a common misconception in the reviews– this isn't a biography of Wu Zhao/Wu Zetian. It's a monograph on her political uses of legends, religious cults and mythological beings to support and abet her careers as Empress and Emperor.
The book was at time a difficult read. There was some dense information, especially for a lay person whose knowledge of Wu Zhao is limited mainly to Chinese period dramas and a handful of books on general Chinese history. I picked it up because I have an abiding interest in political uses of religion, as well as the politics of female politicians.
That said, the information was laid out in a way that was enjoyable and made the thesis easy to follow. Rothschild is clearly passionate about the subject and has both a soft spot for and clear-eyed perspective on Wu Zhao and her life. This was a pleasure to read.
2/3/2017: REREAD BECAUSE I NEEDED TO. This book is so charming. And now that I'm a little farther away from Marvel!Loki, Lain is definitely a really fascinating character on his own.
Original review:
I don't know what I was expecting when I requested this book off of NetGalley, but I don't think this was it. I noticed it was listed as an LGBT book on the site and promptly forgot about that listing, so I was somehow startled to realize that, yes, this was, in fact, a book about a young Black (and Jewish!!!) boy being the reincarnation of a goddess and falling in love with Loki. Not that I was particularly bothered– Loki in this book is definitely a woobie-Loki in the vein of some of the more recent Marvel depictions (I'll admit that Loki: Agent of Asgard heavily influenced my mental images of both Loki and Sigmund), but my “that's not historically accurate behavior” was soothed by the fact that the woobiness was actually plot relevant for once. Gosh. If I had a quibble, it's that the pacing was a bit uneven at times– I was glad that Sigmund's friends were brought into the main plot, but their integration was somewhat awkward, and didn't progress their character development as well as I would have liked. That aside, it was an entertaining book, that I have no problems recommending to people who enjoy comic book-y, queer reinterpretations Norse mythology.
There are a lot of things I liked about this book– queer characters, interesting setting, the fact that the expected romances were circumvented (can we have a whole book about Riley?)
And then there was the “barren” plot line. Because g-d forbid a book handle a young woman dealing with her body's issues without it turning out to be fucking MAGIC. And g-d forbid a book handle a female character's ostensible inability to have kids as anything other than a fucking “deficiency”.
Tantra wavered between a 3 and 4 star book for me, and I have to admit that I'm disappointed that the author doesn't seem to have written a sequel.
I'm not a fan of the Laurel K. Hamilton-style hard-bitten vampire hunter, and this book was pretty trope-y from the get-go (mid-twenties, attractive female hunter in leather!), but it never got too overwhelmingly rote for me. It's definitely both a debut novel and a self-published novel, and I had my expectations adjusted accordingly. The pacing was off at times; for example the death of her boss and destruction of their hide out is dealt with in a weirdly perfunctory manner, and the love interest gets sadly little development.
Where the book departed from the common urban fantasy tropes it got interesting– the interpersonal relationships of the author with her aunt and cousin, implied relationship with her mother and arranged marriage subplots were fresh, as was the incorporation of a variety of Indian magic and holidays. I read it in a day, and there were only a handful of moments where I rolled my eyes.
It's pretty shocking how few books of Hindu apologetics exist in English. This was a concise, clear-eyed religious defense of Hinduism, written in a way that people who have no knowledge base in Indian history or Hinduism will be able to understand.
A lively combination of history, religious doctrine, linguistics and scholarly politics, it keeps the readers attention with succinct chapters on a variety of topics. Many Many Many Gods gives the uninformed reader a nice little dip into the broad cultural knowledge needed to understand a religion which has lasted for thousands of years and influences the politics of billions of people.
The only time the book lost me was in last couple of chapters– Achuthananda dipped into Wendy Doniger and her cohorts, and his bitterness at her kinda got a little overwhelming. I mean, I'm all into thinkshaming Wendy Doniger et al's shitty claims, but it could have been done in one chapter instead of three.
This had been hanging out on my “reading” list for a year and a half. No idea why, but I think my Kindle died and then I got distracted and started reading other things, so I actually re-started it in early June.I think I first encountered La Llorona when I was a pre-teen, in [b:Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype 241823 Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype Clarissa Pinkola Estés https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1433638820s/241823.jpg 981745], and have had an on-and-off love affair with her since.This is an enjoyable and pleasantly un-jargony book, although it might be a little overwhelming if you're new to Chican@ studies or the legend of La Llorona. Pèrez has a workman-like prose and the folklore studies and anthropological analyses are readily understandable from a layman's perspective. I started out highlighting in my copy stories and studies that I hadn't yet read, and let me tell you, this book is a treasure trove if you want to dive into Chican@ authors and poets, both about this topic and in general.