Astrid Hawk

I enjoy learning Danish (and languages in general), but I found reading this a chore. It read more like a bunch of exercises one might find in a textbook, designed to present vocabulary or grammar points in context, rather than as real short stories. As other reviewers have said, don't pick up this book expecting any literary value - not even along the lines of nursery rhymes or traditional children's stories. There is no character development or discussion of broader themes or more nuanced concepts that the stories could feasibly address. Because the vocabulary is limited, sentence structure is also often extremely elementary - it sounds halting even to a non-native speaker, like reading a 1st grade reader “See Jane Run”. For example “They were on the ships. The ships were big. There were 3 big ships.” - that sort of thing. If your goal is to learn more vocabulary that you wouldn't necessarily encounter in a grammar textbook, this book will help with that goal. If your goal is to enjoy reading real, albeit elementary, literature in Danish, this book will not meet your needs.

Didn't expect to like this one as much as I did - but I liked it from start to finish. I found the story engaging and consistently paced, but it was the immersive level of detail and imagery that really pulled me in and kept me there.

The seeds of the story come from the very little that is known about real-life female 15th century Chinese doctor Tan Yunxian. Since there's almost nothing known about her beyond what she recorded in the preface to her own book, plus what her grand-nephew recorded in his own preface when he re-published the book, most of the story itself is fiction, pulled together from imagined scenarios that would have created the medical cases Tan documented in her book. The amount of research that went into this must have been staggering - although there is plenty of research out there on 15th century China, this book dealt with a lot of niches, and included tons of immersive detail that one likely wouldn't find just reading a standard history book. Like, for example, the construction of a “marriage bed”; specific herbs used and terms for maladies and remedies in women specifically; what women used for menstruation; and how the grass or moss in courtyards felt under their feet. There was the cattiness, the pecking order, of the women's quarters, with the large family structure and the concubines. There were the medical cases themselves - most of them almost fun little puzzles as I tried to guess what we might call the problem based on the antiquated and non-anatomical explanation the book used. Even the vocabulary used in the book reflected the times - although it was all English, the book uses the closest translations of the terms that would have been used rather than using the modern terms. For example, the words “womb” or “uterus” are always referred to as the “child palace”; smallpox is “heavenly flowers disease”, with the pustules being “beans”. Reading See's description of the writing process in the end helped me sort out what was fact from fiction, but otherwise it was pretty seamless.

I'm often put off by the overly feminine energy in books about female friendships, particularly where the women are abused or mistreated by modern standards and they often bond over hatred of men. There is plenty of female mistreatment in this book - some of it painful/infuriating to read - due to the time period and culture that the story is set in. Yet the women are all accepting of their place - where they “rebel”, they do so in a way to be true to themselves, not for the sake of rebelling against a system they believe is flawed (because they really don't believe it to be flawed - it's what they grew up with and are indoctrinated into from birth regardless of their economic status). Their bonds felt real to me - not overly feminine or off-putting. It's possible that this is the first truly feminist book I have enjoyed, and certainly reminds me of why I love historical fiction.

Although there is little literary value here, the writing is more fluid and the topics a bit more nuanced in this collection of stories than in the Danish beginner version. Perhaps it's because the author speaks French more fluently than Danish - or perhaps the Intermediate level made him feel free-er to use more advanced (and therefore more natural-sounding) sentence structures. Not being a native speaker myself, I can't evaluate whether the writing appropriately used colloquial phrases - some seemed a little formal or old-fashioned based on what I've learned, but probably still understandable by native speakers. As with the Danish version, most of the stories were designed to introduce vocabulary in context and were less concerned with being engaging or having clever meaningful twists. At the end of most of them I felt like face-palming - the endings were either incredibly obvious or so inconsequential that one questioned why one bothered reading the story at all (aside from the vocabulary of course). That said, I did learn some new vocabulary, and it was a relatively easy way for me to get some contextual French practice outside of drills and workbooks.

Everyone should read this book. Seriously, everyone. Not because it's an easy read, or because it will provide revelations on human nature - but because knowing history like this is critical for the health and safety of polities today. For most of us in the western world, especially of my generation or younger, much of the truth in this genocide was swept under the rug. As a 12-year-old, I knew that there was a conflict in Rwanda, but the term genocide was never used to describe it (and now after reading this book I actually know why), and there was very little about it in the news outlets that reached me as a kid. We certainly never discussed it in school, despite having a weekly section for discussion of current events in the news. After reading this book, I understand that it wasn't kept from me out of a desire to protect my child eyes and ears from the brutality of the world - it was an explicit political decision to avoid involvement. An explicit decision to collectively turn our nation's (and the entire UN's) backs on the atrocities and minimizing everyone's guilt over it by downplaying it.

Gourevitch's book examines the genocide through several lenses. There is a section on Rwandan history, explaining how the tribal/racial segregations were perpetuated throughout history (of course accelerated by White colonizers). There is a section on the 100-day genocide itself, from several perspectives - Gourevitch interviewed Tutsi survivors, Hutu leaders, and Hutus who resisted extensively. There is a section on the post-genocide struggles - some of it philosophical. How do you hold perpetrators accountable for mass murder? If the punishment for murder is the death penalty, but the murderer killed hundreds, how do you achieve a proportional punishment? And if you put all genocide perpetrators to death, how do you rebuild your economy and population? There is a section on the reverse atrocities committed against Hutu refugees and in prisons after the genocide. There is a section on (at the time known as) Zaire's impact on the entire political landscape. There is a section on the UN's involvement, how they were limited by their own mandate and how prominent world leaders and UN leaders deliberately hamstrung the forces on the ground.

Gourevitch does a fantastic job of presenting the realities starkly and mostly objectively. Much of the book uses a detached tone that matches the tone used by most of the interviewees - survivors and perpetrators alike. Where that detachment is disturbing, Gourevitch acknowledges it directly. There is a lot of human psychology underlying this whole thing, and while Gourevitch is not a psychologist, the psychological underpinnings and various motivations of people are examined and speculated about.

Reading this book, I never felt horrified by graphic descriptions. I didn't feel horrified, exactly, at the events that were described - murders of neighbors, random beatings by Hutu military of radio broadcasters who said the wrong thing, etc. I think we've become inured to them through film and TV. What I was horrified by though was how little I had known about the topic. About how much was deliberately hidden. We say “never again” about the Holocaust, and at the same time allow it to happen again and again because it's more politically convenient to allow it to happen than to try to prevent it. At a meta level, I'm horrified and deeply discouraged by human nature. I still think a lot of the answer is education - not reading stories written by the victors, but reading hard, truthful examinations of the facts and motivations like this one. Examining the patterns. Learning to recognize them in our own world. I feel like my educational journey on this topic is just beginning. As I said - everyone should read this book.

It wasn't until a few days after reading the book and contemplating my review that I realized the title was a double entendre. There is the more humorous, literal meaning - the main character is a dragon pest exterminator, sort of a dragon-slayer on a micro-scale (although he slays them by the hundreds in his job as an exterminator). And then there is another interpretation more along the lines of “here there be dragons” and “everyone has baggage”. All the main characters, and even some of the side characters, had a major personal challenge that they had to learn about and face down in the course of this book - essentially, slaying their own personal dragons. Very clever, Beagle.

I really enjoyed this book - after a long stretch of modern newer releases that seem to have been designed by middling authors for a “popular” group of readers (everything is about eyeballs these days), this book was a breath of fresh air. It is written in an irreverant, humorous tone that reminded me of Terry Pratchett or The Princess Bride, with enjoyable characters who all seemed humorously aware of their own flaws. The story itself was a bit unevenly paced, and at times it felt like Beagle hadn't really bothered with rules in his world-building (the magic especially really got away from him I felt... I mean the guy was not only a master illusionist apparently, but could return from the dead, merge with dragons, and animate human servant thralls from vegetables) - but it was overall a fun romp through a dragon-filled world that was an enjoyable read.

This book's summary(ies) all describe this as a puzzle-solving, book-themed, quest-driven plot. Unfortunately, 2 of 3 of those descriptions are inaccurate. The middle 30-40% of the book does involve a multi-day “game” in which the participants are asked to solve riddles and play some group games... but for the most part the riddles are simple and childish, and only a few are actually presented in the book and described. There is very little puzzle to solve. The story is book-themed, yes, but it is not about literature in general, but about a fictional children's author. The “quest” feels less like a quest and more like a bizarre interlude in one self-victimized woman's unrealistic life. It might not be such a terrible book - and parts of it were fun to read, despite much of it being simplistic and boring and repetitive - but the summary is really doing it a disservice by attracting readers it isn't meant for.

Many other reviews I read argued that the relationship between the main character and Christopher, a foster child, is wildly inappropriate, and that one of the other adult main characters, the author Jack, is gross and creepy. I disagree on both fronts. While the MC would not have been able to have the relationship she has with Christopher in real life, there was nothing abusive or sexual or gross about it. She just wouldn't have been legally allowed to get that close to him due to foster care rules and safe school rules. As for Jack - again, there was nothing sexual or gross there. Aside from his drinking, he actually seemed pretty naive and childish in his view of the world. He wasn't so much “luring” kids to his island as just behaving like a kid himself - doing what he wanted, trying to be a superman/savior, without much regard for the real-world constraints on that.

For me, this book's greatest flaws were 3-fold:
1. Lucy is just completely unlikeable. Although she grew up in a loving home with her grandparents, she continued to allow herself to feel childhood emotional trauma (her mother was a narcissist) to the point that it limited her in living her own life 2 decades later. We, the readers, were repeatedly beaten over the head with how desperate her situation was, how she could not afford to spend $15 on a gift of toys for a child she wanted to full-time support, and how much she (daily) carried lessons from her childhood with her.
2. For long stretches in the middle of the book, we took a timeout from the fun and games and riddles to go on this bizarre romantic side-quest with Hugo and Lucy. Again, Lucy is completely unlikeable - a whimpering victim who doesn't seem to have any notable qualities at all other than her childhood history. Hugo is an apparently great (but also creepy) artist, but it's never clear what he sees in Lucy or why he really wants to “save” her.
3. The writing and the main events in the book were childish and simplistic - and yet the book dealt with some very adult themes like the foster care system in the US, child abuse, drugs and overdose, broken families, narcissism and mental illness, alcoholism, etc. It was a tonal dissonance that really never got resolved for me. In the end I read that the author was inspired by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and that did make a bit of sense... but I think it would have worked better if the overall plot and writing had been more adult, or if the themes had been modified to suit a younger audience.

After such a negative review, why 3 stars and not 2? If you ignored the tonal dissonance, the annoying lack of character of Lucy, and the stupid romance... which I was able to do for 5-10 pages at a time sometimes... it was a fun idea and an easy, fast read. If you ignore reality, the sappy happy ending was tolerable and I could put aside my literary pride for a few minutes to enjoy the happy nonsense of it. With a bit less child abuse and difficult adult situations, it would have been a great book to just be a kid again.

I think I'm spoiled for all audio books now. Hearing this in Trevor's voice, with his honed ability to assume various accents and his knowledge of multiple languages, was definitely the way to go. I really enjoyed some of the humor inherent in the stories, which didn't even really need embellishment or imagination to be funny - his childhood was just that absurd. Of course, there were plenty of other stories that were really not funny. Hard stories of domestic violence, systemic poverty, sexism, racist bullying, etc. - but all of them were nonetheless informative and made Trevor's transformation even more impressive. I really enjoyed his ability to rationally dissect the absurdities of apartheid, human biases, laws in general, and his childish arguments with his mom against blind religious faith. I also learned quite a bit about the ins and outs of apartheid through his portrayal - although this isn't intended to be a book “about apartheid”, it's certainly an engaging way to learn about it (not to minimize the atrocities).

I don't follow celebrities. Before picking up this book, I could have told you that Demi Moore was a movie star, but I couldn't have told you what movies she was in, when she was most popular, or what “scandals” and stories people told about her. I only picked this up because, embarassingly, it was one of the few nonfiction “reads” on an audio book 2024 challenge I found - and it had decent reviews on Audible, although I had my doubts when it came to how relatable it would be.

And indeed, many aspects of her story were not remotely relatable for me - but it turned out that it didn't matter. Moore's story is really remarkable. Crazy, in terms of the amount of dysfunction she live through and the number of times that something could have gone horribly wrong but instead just taught a lesson. Hard, in that if you're given a tic list of common triggers in stories, Moore hits almost all of them in talking about her life. But remarkable in spite of all that - or maybe because of it.

I was asked, when I finished the book, if I enjoyed it. It's a tough question to answer. I enjoyed Moore's voice - her calm, even tone, maintained even while incongruously presenting the most horrifying scenarios, was oddly soothing. As if Moore herself was assuring me that this is bad, but it's not as bad as it sounds. Or, this is bad, but it will all turn out ok. Some of the things she discussed were, unfortunately, somewhat relatable, and it helped hearing her recount her own lessons from them - it made me think, well, if she could get through all that, I can definitely get through my own issues. She said at one point that she thought people liked her slightly husky voice because they saw a blend of both strength and vulnerability in it - and she's right. That came through in the narration.

I enjoyed many of the anecdotes, particularly about the movie making process and Moore's thoughts on the stories she was helping to tell, what worked, what didn't, where the magic was. Those behind-the-scenes takes that are always so fascinating.

And I enjoyed hearing her talk about her girls and their life together growing up. It was clear from the way she spoke about them that she had genuinely loved raising them.

But it's hard to say I enjoyed the book. There's too much in it that's just... hard. It feels wrong to say I enjoyed hearing about someone's trauma, even if the person was no longer suffering from that trauma. (But are we ever truly free of it?). This book, Moore's life, really does have pretty much everything most people try to avoid in their reading: alcoholism, prostitution, underage prostitution, drugs, suicide and attempted suicide, pregnancy, miscarriage, eating disorders, body image issues, sexism, misogyny, toxic codependence, abusive relationships, auto-immune disease... it's all in there. Was it “enjoyable” to hear Moore talk about that? No, not really. But it was definitely remarkable to hear about all the good decisions she made for her future despite her childhood that should have taught her all the wrong lessons. It's remarkable that she didn't end up on the streets, or living as her parents did, from illegal crash pad to illegal crash pad, caught up in drugs and alcohol. It's remarkable that every time she found herself in a bad place, she either had people come along to help pull her out of it (and she does credit those people), or she was able to find the solution herself. It's remarkable that she shared her story not from a perspective of victimhood, of pity, or of seeking sensationalism, but as a way to help her heal and perhaps help others heal.

It was surprisingly well done. I didn't “enjoy” it - but I respect it and admire it and I'd recommend it to others, even if you, like me, aren't star followers.

Jeg læste denne bog for at lære mere idiomatisk dansk. Det tjente sit formål, men ellers er det fuldstændig vrøvl.

Greg vil altid være elendig, fordi Jeff Kinney synes, det er sjovt for hans hovedperson at være uhøflig og voldelig. Han tror, det er den type helt, som unge drenge har brug for i bøger. Men denne bog forstærker dårlig stereotyper, som jeg ikke ønsker, at mine børn skal idolisere. Det ER muligt at beholde humoren OG få Greg til at lære at blive en bedre ven og menneske. Men Kinney var bare doven. Jeg hadede absolut denne bog.

——-

I picked up this book to learn more idiomatic Danish. It served its purpose, but otherwise it's completely rubbish.

Greg (the main character) will always be miserable because Kinney thinks it's funny for his main character to be rude and abusive. He thinks this is the type of hero that young boys are missing in middle grade books. But this book reinforces bad stereotypes that I certainly wouldn't want my (hypothetical) children to idolize. It IS possible to keep the humor AND have Greg learn to be a better friend and human - but Kinney was just lazy. He went for the obvious jokes and in doing so really underestimates his readers. I absolutely hated this book and I'm glad I'm done with it.

Didn't love it, definitely didn't hate it, and it moved fast enough to keep me interested. The book followed 2 different timelines and story lines that were really only loosely related (via a father-daughter relationship) - the eponymous plot being the father's story set in Helsinki in the 1980s. The historical timeline was less spy thriller and more... I don't know... just literary fiction? I found Charlie (the father) to be completely unlikeable - he was too worried about being liked and too much of a coward to ever do the right thing. Ever. Of course, there wouldn't have been any Helsinki timeline at all if he hadn't been a coward (and frankly pretty gullible for a spy) - but he was really hard to sympathize with.

Amanda's contemporary story was more what you expect from the “spy thriller” genre, complete with good old KGB (well, modern KGB)-vs-CIA chess moves - but there ultimately wasn't much to it (not a lot of chess moves), and it felt like it wrapped up just as it really got going. There were also some weird head-scratcher side quests in there... like Amanda's sudden struggle with alcoholism that she apparently overcomes in a single detox weekend (??), and her rather belated coming-of-age/coming-into-herself where her big self revelation is that... her wardrobe is frumpy and she feels so much better just expressing herself with new clothes (again... ???).

The book attempts to bring both generations/story lines together at the end and give all the main characters a relatively “happy” ending (but really more “satisfying” than “happy” in Charlie's case because, you know, he did bad things and we can't reward him for that) - but I felt like the author was in a hurry to wrap it up. I was left with a lot of questions... but not in the clever-cliffhanger kind of way.

Anyway, in summary - the spy parts were fun, the rest of it was just meh. I probably won't read it again, but I didn't hate it either.

This was my first ever audiobook. I have a number of thoughts on audiobooks in general (I don't really count consuming audiobooks as “reading”, for example, but the rest of the world does so here we are) that don't really belong in this review - but I think I chose well in making this particular book my first.
1. The book is narrated by the author, which gives me confidence that the tone is presented as the author intended.
2. Kate has a British accent and narrates with an authoritative tone that lends both character and credulity to the lecture experience. She also modulates her tone to incredulous or satirical where appropriate for humor.
3. As a nonfiction book, it felt more like a particularly engaging lecture series than like having a book read to me.

In terms of the content - I'd prefer to give this 3.5 stars because, although it's highly feminist, and does acknowledge many of the big sex- and sex-adjacent lgbtqia+ and racial issues in today's culture, it sweeps many of those issues aside, almost as if they're secondary to the “main” issues today (which still center around white cis women's experiences). However, I was continuously impressed (in every chapter except the racial chapter) in the level of difficulty writing this book must have involved - everything had to be carefully researched, questioned, corroborated, and pieced together from disconnected fragments to find common threads and narratives otherwise lost to history and lack of record-keeping. And for that task, I think this book deserves a 4 - because although the author acknowledges that the actual human experience is missing and impossible to know, there is a LOT in here - 8.3 hours of historical tidbits - that most of us never think to ask about and wouldn't know where to find them ourselves.

As for the historical content - the topics in this book are less about how people had sex through history and more about topics AROUND it - genital hygiene, moral and social attitudes, religious views, legal structures around it, etc. A common theme is just how little anyone knew about the human body when it came to reproductive organs, the endocrine system, and pleasure - but particularly how little anyone knew about women's bodies and how mis-informed men were always the ones explaining it. It was in parts appalling, that some “common knowledge” was even worse than I could have imagined, and parts affirming - “oh, it makes sense why xyz happens today, given where we came from, but it's still wrong”. Some of my favorite parts were on language - early in the book there is a section on etymology that I found especially entertaining, but later on other terms are sometimes examined - for example “feminine hygiene” and its role in teaching menstruaters early in life that their cycle and sex organs are dirty and something to be cleaned. (And relatedly - Lysol was originally sold as a douche and spermicide - who knew.)

I guess to sum up the whole thing... we've come a long way, but we still have a long way to go... and this book really only touched on a tiny portion of the issues that are prevalent across the world today.

I suspect romance/chick-lit is just not for me - slow-moving “stories” that have very little plot and mostly just relationship development, grating descriptions of longing and infatuation using cringey metaphors, and completely unrealistic characters for one or both of the leading characters.

As for this book specifically: this is definitely a pregnancy story. There is probably as much in here about pregnancy and maternity stuff and giving birth (and some infertility topics) as there actually is of the romance. So, content warning there.

This book was better than the “historical romance” I read last month, and was a more enjoyable read - the writing style felt more sophisticated, even though the tone was casual and flippant at times, and the characters were more believable. Unfortunately, I didn't find any of the male characters to be realistic - and the romantic interest struck me as too child-like, self-effacing, and awkward. Although it was easy to sympathize with him, it wasn't easy to get on-board with Eve's growing infatuation of him (and their eventual relationship). I did read that the author models all her male characters on her husband - but still, I just found them as a general rule way too considerate and in-touch with their feelings to be realistic cis men. I suppose I should be comforted that at least A man like this exists (the model for the characters), and I should think how nice it is to experience a fantasy world where all the male main characters are kind and considerate and just generally not stuck on hyper-masculinity. I mean, it's a fiction book... so there's no rule that says everything has to be realistic. I think I wanted the characters to feel more real (and relatable) because the other aspects of the story - the pregnancy and Eve's relationship with Willa - felt way more real and imperfect - so the fantasy characters felt jarring in contrast.

I do think the author had some good themes in here - for example, Eve's journey of self-discovery through pregnancy teaches her two important things:
1. Learn to identify what you want in life and then ask for it/commit to it
2. Most people are self-focused, but a few are other-focused - pregnancy and motherhood help with this perspective change.

Both were good “life lessons” to take into the real world, but although the author provides a good example (through Eve) of the first, the second one felt lacking. Eve did fall in love - with a man and with her baby - and the implication was that because she realized she was in love, and she started thinking about things she could do to make those beings feel loved, meant that she had figured out how to be other-focused. But Eve didn't really have a fundamental perspective shift - she's still just thinking about herself and the people closest to her. It's not really what the other-focused perspective is about. You don't just see worth in and want the best for a select few people on your list, but for everyone, including strangers. Eve's revelation was more about realizing that she was loved and could love in return - and then she was rewarded by pretty much everyone in her life miraculously making the right decisions to give her a fantasy nontraditional family scenario when her child is born. And... again... it's fiction, so why shouldn't there be fantasy. I guess it just seemed to water down the message, and I was left feeling like there wasn't much point in reading the book if I wasn't enjoying the romance.

Maybe I just expect too much out of romance novels. As I said... perhaps it's not for me.

Another read I'd give 4.5 stars if I could! There was a lot about this book I really enjoyed - the characterization of the foxes, the writing style, the way the author adapted real fox mythology/religion from some historical Asian sects, and the immersive world building where Chinese, Manchurian, Mongol, and Japanese cultural aspects and history were seamlessly woven and embedded into the story. I never felt that the fantasy was heavy-handed, and although it took itself seriously, the fox narrator was just self-deprecating enough that you (the reader) understood early on that foxes in this world are not infallible, magical creatures, but simply another species, highly fallible, and at constant risk of falling into their own traps. The protagonists were easy to sympathize with and some cases also really fall in love with or at least want to root for. And thankfully, although it was touch and go for a moment, the ending was very satisfying - everyone got their karmic “just desserts”, but the author didn't go as far as a campy/sappy “and they lived happily ever after”.

I feel bad giving this book 4 stars... but I can't give half stars, and I reserve a 5 star rating for a book I'd want to read again and again. (And I think that's highly unlikely to happen for a nonfiction book for me.) That said, I'd easily give this book 4.5 stars if I could and I think it deserves praise and recognition. The author does a fantastic job of expressing difficult concepts succinctly and helps the reader question the role that sex and sexualization has played in their lives and their families' lives and in society as a whole. Although short on solutions, this book really peels back the layers on a number of sex- and human-relationship-related issues in society. I particularly liked the frank examination of what “platonic” and “romantic” love really mean (a question I have pondered myself for years) and how relationships can make so much more sense and even be easier and more fulfilling when we remove societal expectations and the labels that drive those expectations. Although I think this book is particularly helpful for asexual people seeking validation/comfort, and for Ace allies seeking more information, I think it can benefit everyone who is willing to examine the structures around them and in their own relationships.

In a word... ugh. Romance isn't really my genre, but I thought a historical romance would be historical fiction, which I usually love, with some romance. I was wrong. The “plot”, of which there was very little, stemmed from a real historical conflict in Mexico, but the history was more of a vague excuse for the characters to exist than actually integral to the story. The two leading characters were so exceptional as to be completely unbelievable for the time and genders in which they were cast. For 3/4 of the book, nothing happened and I was actually rather bored - although I enjoy witty repartee, the narration around the dialog was pretty cringy at times, and the dialog itself kept revisiting the same themes which got repetitive. In the last 1/4 of the book when the plot actually happens, everything happens all at once with no regard to timeline or how long things took to happen in the time period. As for the romance... frankly I've read fan fiction with better sex and better relationship building. And I don't think I'm spoiling anything when I say “little wife” is the worst bedroom nickname I've ever heard. Ugh. Maybe this was just a miss for me personally - I read reviews from romance readers who really got into the characters and favorably compared the story to Bridgerton. (IMO it's not Bridgerton... it takes itself far too seriously for that.) Disappointed I didn't enjoy it - but luckily there are plenty more books in the world.

This book had me looking up Welsh vowel pronunciation and Welsh mythology, and I'd give it 4 stars for that. So maybe 3.5 stars overall? The plot and pace was engaging enough, and the magical elements and world building enjoyable - but the themes were simple and the plot twists/reveals felt awkward and heavy-handed. Overall a nice quick and mentally light read to make progress on my TBR pile, but just doesn't quite make that “would return to again” shelf.

Lots of good information for anyone considering getting a wolfdog or wolf hybrid northern breed like a husky, malamute, etc. Especially good for those who have experience with other types of dogs - assumes the reader is at least familiar with owning/raising/training dogs. Best read in accompaniment with another more generic book for 1st-time puppy owners.

When I first started reading this book, I was really impressed with the step-by-step, comprehensive approach that emphasized forming a bond with the dog and positive reinforcement with more gentle corrective techniques. After having an actual puppy to apply the techniques with, however, I realized how unhelpful the book actually was. Dunbar presents his technique as the ONLY way that will actually work, and deviating from the plan, being the slightest bit inconsistent, or making a single mistake with house-training or behavior correction is irredeemable.

The book is filled with wrist-slap anecdotes about dog ownership “failures” - usually from one wrong move, like putting the puppy in the basement because it misbehaved around a guest, and then the puppy forever acted scared around its owners and was completely untrainable. Further, the entire puppy house-training regimen relied on having the puppy in a crate or pen for long periods of time, happily entertained with a Kong or other stuffed chew toy. My puppy wanted nothing to do with any kind of confinement, and she went through stuffed chew toys in under a minute - even tools like lick mats didn't keep her occupied for more than 5 minutes. I still wanted to crate train her, but that had to be a completely separate effort from house-training. I spent the 1st 2 months frantically adapting to my reality with her, and in the end my own sanity was only saved by discarding the desire to be “perfect” according to the book.

At a year old now, my dog is healthy, knows commands, and doesn't have accidents in the house. She doesn't bite strangers or children or even act particularly erratically around them. She has no problem with people or other animals around her food bowl. She doesn't cower, doesn't jump on furniture, and doesn't beg for food handouts at dinner. I had to throw out most of the techniques in the book and just watch and listen to what she was telling me. She's not a perfectly trained/behaved dog ALL the time. She wouldn't pass a service dog exam yet (although she's pretty close). But we're all still sane and happy, and that's what counts.

Dunbar's tone is really condescending, which is not my preferred way to learn. That said, the techniques presented in this book for teaching commands and behavior patterns were useful. I relied much more on what I found in this book than in his puppy book.

Finally, a read that didn't hinge on man-hating feminism, domestic abuse, and rape! There was plenty of murder and betrayal, but it wasn't so violent that it made me want to put the book down. Filled with magic and adventure heavily inspired by/borrowed from Arabian tales, this story was part epic quest and part an exploration of the nature of mankind and our greed and desire for power. None of the characters and creatures were either entirely evil or entirely good - all of them lived by a particular code, some involving more violence than others, and their motivations and internal struggles and growth all made sense within the framework of the story. The magic and adventure were very enjoyable, and the pacing was even - my only complaint is that the ending was so abrupt and left some unanswered questions about a critical character.

I almost always enjoy a good dystopian/post-apocalyptic story, although this one was more peri-apocalyptic and not so much dystopian as it was broken. I loved the brutality, desperation, and heartbreaking hope in The Road. I devoured the Wool series and couldn't wait for our heroine to break to the surface and be free. Endings of such books are often deliberately ambiguous or open-ended - the characters are shown to (at least temporarily) break out of their cycle... but to a better future? Or any future at all?

My issue with this book wasn't that it moved slowly (though it did) or that the ending left a lot of questions with little resolution. My issue was that the ending didn't make sense to me. It had loopholes.

Spoiler alert
* What happened to the diggers?
* White Alice sent their 2nd generation off on a murder mission, where they couldn't communicate with her and risked never seeing her again, completely ignoring the fact that they just went to a lot of trouble to get a male for her? Huh?
* White Alice was trying to protect their home - ok. But what happened to ensuring their survival? They literally torched the people who were trucking necessary supplies into the region.
* How was it that White Alice learned to fight and kill people and handle killer dogs but never seemed to learn survival skills like hunting and fishing?
* How did Meyer go from a weak old man, blinded by his misguided vision, to a cold-blooded murderer capable of killing a local with survival skills, back to a blind idiot who left his captive alone with his only vehicle while he went off tracking a deer?
* For that matter, how would a clearly skilled and experienced architect never catch on that his project wasn't about building anything? Why wouldn't he hire builders and engineers instead of just foundation diggers?

I guess my other issue with this book was that I managed once again to find a feminist manifesto hiding behind a trope I usually love. Somehow, the fact that the people doing most of the killing were women, killing for their own survival and to protect their homestead, was justifiable? Or at least understandable? Because men have always taken what wasn't theirs and they were mostly stupid and brutish and afraid of women's power. As someone who was socialized female, I abhor sexism and am all for female empowerment. But the moral rationalization here just doesn't work for me.

DO NOT READ THIS BOOK IF you don't want to read about domestic abuse, child abuse/grooming, pregnancy, abortion, and rape.

This was not a badly written book - in fact, it's the first book in years that has used English words I didn't know. It's very well-written from an imagery perspective; although some phrases get reused a bit much, the imagery is vivid and the contrast extreme between nature scenes involving the Weyward women, and the manmade scenes that have a distinct lack of nature.

As for the story itself though - I really would have preferred not to read it. The cover should have come with a major CW (as I've put in the first line of my review). (Actually, come to think of it, 3 of the last 4 non-Sanderson books I've read have involved domestic abuse and/or rape at the hands of men. Perhaps I should just stick to pure fantasy and sci-fi and skip the general fiction.)

What made this book even more frustrating, though, was the knowledge that these scenes of women being overpowered by men, which appeared again and again through the book (minor spoiler: it's one of the things that connects the main characters), were made up to enhance the drama of the story. Yes, I know that abuse like this happens in the real world and has happened through history, and it is as much psychological as it is physical. I believe the women were likely presented accurately... as dis-empowered first, appearing like helpless victims who didn't want to help themselves, and later re-empowered, seeing themselves as survivors instead of victims. I think it was probably an accurate portrayal of abuse over the generations, and I don't fault the author for that. BUT that doesn't make it a fun book it read. It's not fun to read about other people suffering, especially while we live in a world where the same suffering can be inflicted with mostly impunity by the perpetrators.

And worse, 80% of the situations in the book would have been avoided had the women simply TALKED to their daughters. Yes, Altha's mother told her explicitly about their secret, but still she never told her about sex and human conception. Although she knew that people were cruel, she never explained what awaited her daughter in the world - just made her promise never to be herself. I mean COME ON. I know people in the 1600s and in Britain in the early 1900s didn't really speak of such things explicitly... but this is a line of women nurturing women. They don't need to hide behind propriety. I think that was what made the whole thing so infuriating for me - knowing that, while abuses like these DO happen, they were only happening to these characters because the author wanted them to. The magical/witchy elements that were prominent in the synopsis and in other readers' glowing reviews actually played quite a minor role in the book, which felt both disappointing and blindsiding.

This one surprised me in that it turned out to be more of a tomb-raider-esque adventure - a departure from the magical crime thriller the previous two books in the series had. I enjoyed it the change, perhaps even more than the crime-solving books, but I did feel that the Investiture concept was something bolted on at this stage of the saga rather than something that was always present in the Metalborn universe. I really enjoyed meeting other humans and interacting with other technology than what the stereotypical steampunk society of Elendel uses. Marasi continues to really grate on me, though I'm glad her brush with god-hood was brief. Wayne continues to be the gem of the cast, in my opinion, though I found myself really relating to Steris when she opens up, so I'm glad she was given a critical role in this one.

Starting to feel constrained by the 5-star rating scale. I also gave Peach Blossom Spring 4*, but it was a much more artfully written book that did a fantastic job of really bringing the sounds and colors and smells of mid-century China and Taiwan to life. I wanted this book to bring Viêt Nam to life for me in a similar way, but it didn't. Perhaps because the author is herself Vietnamese and English is not her first language. Though to be fair, the writing itself didn't give that away, and I loved the elements of Vietnamese phrases and transliteration woven through it.

All that aside though, I love/hated how much this book haunted me - which made me want to finish it quickly, to get the pain over with. It made me feel guilt and anger for things I hadn't done and wasn't alive for. It made me wonder why my parents never spoke of these issues. It made me understand why my Vietnamese friends and their families always welcomed me on the one hand but still kept a veil between us - even though my generation had nothing to do with any of it.
The ending had a lot of resolution in it, but also left a lot unresolved at the same time. There was always a sense that life was a series of key turning points punctuated by periods of false calm, facilitated by lies and stories told to survive. And although there was a sense of healing, and maybe even some hope, in the ending, there was also a key message that some things would never be truly resolved, and that the truth was often worse than the not-knowing.

Didn't like this one as much as the previous one - the crime solving part moved a lot slower. As is typical for Sanderson, there was a dramatic acceleration at the end, with a bit a gut-punching twist. Although I didn't enjoy Marasi's character development, and I found Wax a bit flat in this one, Wayne was even more entertaining, and I found that I'd missed TenSoon. I also enjoyed that Sanderson decided to challenge the goodness, or right-ness, of deities (even benevolent ones) in this book.