I... I don't know what to say. This was a horrible book - not in that it was badly written, but because everything and everyone in it were just horrible. It wasn't depressing though, probably because it didn't touch very deeply on the human condition or society at large. It was just like a competition of how mean can people be to each other. Heathcliff probably now dwells amongst one of my most disliked characters in all literature. Still though, I'm giving this around 2.5 to 3 stars because despite the utter awfulness of everything going on in here, it was still fairly engaging to read. I'd have enjoyed it a bit more if there was actually just a single character worth rooting for but there isn't, and maybe that's a deliberate decision on Bronte's part.The story revolves around two families: the Earnshaws at Wuthering Heights, and the Lintons at Thrushcross Grange. One fateful night, Daddy Earnshaw takes in an apparently orphaned boy of unknown origins who doesn't seem to speak a lick of English. Eventually the boy comes to be known as Heathcliff as both his Christian and his last name, and though Daddy Earnshaw himself is partial to Heathcliff, almost everyone else treats him like dirt, especially the Earnshaw son, Hindley, and their neighbour, Edgar Linton. Heathcliff soon strikes up a strong alliance with the daughter of the Earnshaw family, Catherine, who is also surprisingly nasty.The first time I read this book, I went in expecting some epic romance as pop culture has led me to believe (thanks for nothing, pop culture). No. Wrong. That is without doubt hands down the worst way to read this book ever. I would strongly advise against expecting warm fuzzies or even any kind of ships you would bother rooting for. So this time, I went in expecting a tragedy, which... is slightly better but also not really quite the right expectations to have either. I'd say go in expecting a complete shitshow, something like a crazy soap opera but without any likeable or sympathetic characters. Shit hits the fan pretty early in the book anyway, so you would know what you're in for before you're 30% through. It's a bit juicy like [b:The Count of Monte Cristo 7126 The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1611834134l/7126.SY75.jpg 391568], but the vibe is different in that at least in COMC you have plenty of people and relationships that you wanted to root for. Here you're really just waiting for everyone to fade to black.So first up, Heathcliff was probably the worst character I've read in a while, and I'm already inclined to be generous because he had a pretty rough childhood and upbringing, being ill-treated and abused as he was by Hindley Earnshaw. His entire motivation in life was basically just Catherine, and to bring down all others who even remotely stands in his way. He cared for nothing else, neither religious redemption, nor any kind of empathy for his fellow human beings. He wasn't just an indolent, brooding misanthrope either - he was actively malevolent towards his neighbours and everyone he viewed to have done him wrong in his life. He's the sort of spider that weaves a web for years and patiently waits and waits until the people he seeks vengeance towards falls into his trap. He doesn't hesitate to use brute force and violence against anything and everyone, whether man, woman, animal, child, adult, etc. I don't know if this is remotely a redeeming factor, but his malevolence doesn't have sexual tendencies (at least as far as we know, although I'm pretty sure he would've had to rape Isabella to get her pregnant since they were estranged very early on in their marriage). It still doesn't remotely excuse him in any way though.Catherine was not really much better but then again she considers Heathcliff and herself soulmates so that ought to give us an idea of her true nature. She doesn't resort to as much physical violence as Heathcliff does, but she's incredibly bitchy, unfeeling, and ungrateful to most of the people around her. She at least shows some capacity for love and some form of sympathy, though remaining incredibly self-centered throughout it all.There were some characters who may be slightly less annoying than the two main ones, namely Mrs Dean, Mr Lockwood, Hareton, and the younger Catherine, although all of them were also at least mildly annoying at some point or other (I especially wasn't a fan of Hareton physically striking Catherine nearer the end of the book. Yes, she was being pretty snobby, but considering what she's been through and the fact that Hareton is also physically bigger and older than she is, that really raised a lot of red flags for me.).Do I recommend this book? Maybe if you were in a particularly masochistic mood and wanted something where everybody's at least a bit of an asshole and sometimes wholly without redeeming factors.
4.5/5. The Murderbot Diaries sets a high standard but Rogue Protocol kinda squeezes above that benchmark and does things even better than its predecessors.
The titular Murderbot is just a little bit more sarcastic and sharp-witted, just a little bit more human, and the plot is just a little bit tighter and more satisfying to read.
Here, we see our favourite rogue SecUnit (security unit for the uninitiated) decide to go upon a mission to collect evidence to prove wrongdoing against some Big Bad Corporation, GrayCris. It leads him to what is ostensibly an abandoned terraforming facility, but is actually an abandoned illegal mining operation. To collect evidence he has to sneak aboard a team shuttle going down to assess the facility, but soon finds himself doing what he's always told himself he's done doing - protect humans.
There is so much to love about Murderbot, I don't know where to start. Is it his reluctance to get attached to humans? Is it his hermit nature and love for soap operas? Is it him blanking out half way through an intense suspenseful moment and deciding to instead spend those 6 minutes watching the TV show he had on pause in his mental feeds? It's probably all of these things.
Miki, the robot introduced in this installment, provides the perfect foil for Murderbot. It's a perfectly docile, innocent, child-like pet robot that believes wholeheartedly in the goodness of human beings, an attitude that Murderbot is simultaneously jealous of and nauseated by (”I didn't have a stomach so I can't vomit”).
I am endlessly amused by how offputtingly technical the titles of these Murderbot stories can be sometimes - All Systems Red, Rogue Protocol, etc. It calls to mind a story exceedingly burdened with technical and scifi jargon. While there is definitely some of that here, Murderbot is so relatable and so human-like that arguably I've not seen a better example of how blurred the line can be between AI and a 21st century human being.
If you haven't read Murderbot Diaries, you should. Now. It doesnt matter whether or not you are a fan of scifi because this is a protagonist anyone can identify with and enjoy.
“Even when I'm far away, the convenience store and I are connected.”
Omg, this book was actually SO FUN, and yet so provocative at the same time. I will say, though, I felt like this book is probably best appreciated by readers who have spent some time in Japanese, or minimally an Asian community and culture, because there was a lot of satire about the social structures, prejudices, and biases that are still fairly rampant in society and culture here. I also got bonus points of appreciation because Japan is probably my most visited holiday destination and I have an extremely vivid memory and impression of their convenience stores, and the visceral experience it is shopping in them as well as the almost robotic-like standard of service their staff never fail to emulate.
Keiko Furukura has always had trouble pretending to be human. It's not that she's an alien or anything, this isn't a sci-fi or fantasy book, but she's always had trouble understanding the underlying social codes, etiquette, and behaviour. She might be written to be autism-coded, but it's not definitively labeled in this book. In any case, quite often her thought process sounded like an AI going through deep learning to behave more like a human being so that she could fit into society. Despite this though, her narrative voice was personable, often relatable, and overall genuine and sincere in her wish to feel like an accepted part of society, as well as not to hurt the people she at least appreciated for having been kind to her in the past, like her sister.
“When I first started here, there was a detailed manual that taught me how to be a store worker, and I still don't have a clue how to be a normal person outside that manual.”
So, Keiko takes great joy in her job as a part-time convenience store worker, a job she has held for the past 18 years, since she herself was 18 years old. There is a very fixed set of rules guiding her behaviour, and she is valued for following those rules to a T. She enjoys how predictable everything is.
“It was fun to see all kinds of people... don the same uniform and transform into the homogenous being known as a convenience store worker.”
Despite finding joy and fulfillment in her job, she is still constantly being judged by her friends and family for “not being normal”, in that she is 36 years old and still in a “dead-end job” as a part-time convenience store worker. Without going into too much spoilery details, Keiko takes some steps to experience life as someone who is accepted into the fold of society.
There is definitely some satire and criticism here about the misogyny of society as well as the gender and sexuality stereotypes that is still deeply entrenched here. As someone who was born and raised in an Asian society, I think it hit pretty hard. It's easy to judge this book on more left-aligned values and find basically every other character in this book annoying except for Keiko, but I think it's a lot grayer than that over here. There's still a pressure to get into a relationship, to get a full-time job, to get married and have kids, even for me and even in this day and age. It might be a different experience from someone living in another country, especially if they were in USA or the EU, but differences in culture doesn't make any one culture less valid or more backward than the other. Anyway, being from a very similar culture to that of Japan, I could absolutely get the predicament Keiko was in and it hit much harder for me. There's also some commentary here about “normalcy” and how it feels like a performative act most of the time, just that for most of us it just comes more subconsciously than others (like Keiko, who has to make a much more conscious effort about it).
“The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of.”
Overall, I enjoyed this a ton but I'm not sure whether I'd recommend it to just about everyone. To anyone who is far removed from Japanese and Asian societies, this book might be quite bewildering and illegible (I hope it isn't, but I can imagine that it would be). Nevertheless though, it was quirky and had a sense of humour that had me chortling out loud at some parts, with a relatable and endearing though eccentric protagonist too.
This was a really fun read. There were several out-of-this-world elements to it but I found those tolerable if you focus on the main premise of this book: how a “fake” family of 3 people harbouring secrets of their own will deal with that tension while inevitably getting closer and more attached to each other.
Our protagonist is a spy, codename Twilight, who receives a mission to get closer to a reclusive politician. The only public appearance this politician makes is when he attends parent-teacher conferences at the school his son is attending: the prestigious Eden Academy. In order to get close enough to his target, Twilight has to create a “fake” family and pass off as a parent of a legitimate enrolled student in the Academy. He adopts Anya from the orphanage, not knowing that she is in fact psychic and knew from the very beginning about his true job as a spy and the nature of his mission. Later, he meets and proposes a fake marriage to Yor, a salesgirl with a predilection for kicking ass, also without knowing that she is in fact a secret assassin. The scene where Twilight “proposes” to Yor was truly iconic.
While the premise might have the tendency to get gritty, the story is uplifted by good doses of humour. It doesn't hurt to have little Anya around to lift the mood as well. There're some slightly more conservative values in here, at least in this first volume. The reason why Twilight needs to find a fake wife in the first place is because Eden Academy emphasizes traditional family value - so no single-parent families apparently.
Nevertheless, this was a light-hearted, episodic, and enjoyable read and I'd look forward to reading more from the series.
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