Mandy
Originally published in Unravellations.Once I got into the hang of this book, I couldn't put it down. I had to find out what was going down with this mysterious mystery surrounding the murder of various Porters and who was behind it all. It was a fortuitous chance that I picked this book up along with [b:The Eyre Affair 27003 The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next, #1) Jasper Fforde https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1419904150s/27003.jpg 3436605] (not having heard of either of these titles before, and only happened to chance upon them while browsing through library shelves) because their premises run along the same lines (book magic, basically).The tone of this book was decidedly darker than The Eyre Affair, though not so much that it dims the pleasure of reading (I usually prefer a light-hearted narrative tone unless it is incompatible with the plot). This book deals with libriomancy, a nicely crafted magic system whereby naturally talented users (libriomancers, of course) can reach into books and access the book's world. Unlike The Eyre Affair, they do not actually immerse themselves into the book's world and interact with characters in it, but depending on what page they flip to, they may be able to pull out various useful items from the books (a lightsabre, anyone?). While The Eyre Affair dealt mostly with classic literature, Libriomancer was more focused on the current pop culture books (vampires known as ‘sparklers' make a cameo appearance...), which made it very relatable since it was only published 3 years ago.I think there was room for character development, although perhaps Jim C. Hines was planning to save that for a later book in the series. Isaac Vainio was a field agent for the Libriomancers, but suddenly because he accidentally tapped into some kind of power while on a job, he's been forcefully resigned from the field and pushed into a cataloging desk job in the library. He meets Lena Greenwood (although they've apparently met before, though I'm not entirely sure where - Dr Shah's office?) and they're plunged into a top-speed adventure.Thoughts on characters (mostly Lena):It's clear that there's more to Isaac than meets the eye, probably even more than he realises at the point of the novel's closure. Gutenberg, having only made an appearance nearer the novel's ending, seems primed to play a bigger role in future novels either. I'm also not sure whether Isaac's decision to spare Gutenberg's life at the end would play a part in future books. Gutenberg, meanwhile, turned out to be a more pleasant character than I expected. I thought he'd be a grubbing, secretive and suspicious old man but when he did wake up, he turned out to be a more neurotic version of Dumbledore.Anyway, the character that I felt could open a lot of discussions was Lena Greenwood. She's a dryad (tree being) that Isaac assumed was born out of nature in the real world, but she eventually turned out to be a sort of male fantasy creation pulled out from a steamy romance novel by an untrained amateur in libriomancy. That means that she's "written" (or programmed) to sense desire, lust and to shape her personality and character traits into what would most attract her mate. On top of all this, however, she also harbours some pretty strong nature magic that saves both her and Isaac's asses plenty of times in the book, though I wouldn't call her exactly the motorcycle-riding, ass-kicking dryad that the blurb on the back cover describes. For one, she barely rides a motorcycle in this novel.The first time she started making advances on Isaac and when we come to realise that Lena is part of a romance novel creation, a lot of feminist repulsion came into mind. Was this going to spiral into predictability and romance-novel stereotypes? But I continued reading. Lena is a pretty complex character for someone who could've turned out to be just another stereotype. She has long bonded with her lover, Dr Nidhi Shah (I applaud this book for daring to put in a lesbian, interracial relationship), but Dr Shah's kidnapping threw all of this off-balance. Because Lena is written to shape herself according to her lover's needs and wants, she is afraid that she might be used for darker purposes assuming Dr Shah has been lost and turned into a vampire, she decides that she needs to find a new mate - Isaac. Seriously, at this point, I started re-thinking what this novel was about.After a whole bunch of flirting, some near-sex, the startling conclusion for this love triangle is that: Lena wants both! Not because she's a nymphomaniac (hah, but she's a nymph though), but because when she feels torn between two lovers, her personality can't direct itself into one particular direction and so it comes closer into something that belongs to neither lover, and something she can call her own. OK, interesting and non-stereotypical resolution!I think the idea that this female character is written to shape herself according to her mate's desire (I'll not say a man's desire, because her relationship with Nidhi Shah, an Indian woman, is 9 years long before the novel even starts) and to be closely associated with sex, desire and lust because had me reeling for a while. I'll admit that feminist alarm bells were ringing for a bit. But then I quieted them and tried to read deeper into Lena. I realised that she could have easily turned into a sex-obsessed dryad who just wants to get into Isaac's pants now that her previous mate is MIA, but then I also realised that there's a lot more to her than that. I know internal struggles are also a romance-novel stereotype nowadays, battling with the conscience and all, but the ones that happened in this book were believable and not at all cringe-worthy.I know loads of people have criticized Lena, calling her a "sex slave" and all that, but I think there's more to her than that. In fact, if we apply it to the real life, there are women out there who are - we'll not say written as in the book - naturally inclined to having lover after lover, and each time tweaking a bit of their personalities to best suit their partner. Are we to call them sex slaves too? There is nothing inherently wrong with such a behaviour. Lena, in a sense, wants to hold her own, and to develop her own personality (hence the resolution of having 2 lovers at once), essentially making the best of what she's been given and what she can't change.Oh, I like also that Lena is described as veering more towards the ancient Grecian ideal of beauty, being on the more voluptuous and plump side. At one point, an emaciated vampire calls her a "fat chick". Rather than singling out that one moment of what some would see as body-shaming, I'd like to highlight that throughout the entire novel, told from Isaac's perspective, he finds Lena nothing less than extremely attractive and desirable, despite her figure being what some others would call "fat".I'd recommend this to anyone who is looking for an adventure story with some comic moments, a well-crafted magic system and most importantly, who loves reading. A critic's blurb on the back cover said something about this book being written for those who love books, and I have to agree with that.P.S. I LOVE SMUDGE. I don't think I've ever had any affection for any kinds of fictional spiders before but Smudge is such a darling despite us not having any idea what he's thinking.
One of my first Miss Marple books in a long time. I love reading this little old lady and her wide-eyed but “accidental” observations about human nature and facts that lead the police to uncover the solution to the mystery in front of them.
What I don't understand is why Miss Blacklock chose to announce the murder in the first place? Her objective was to get rid of Rudi Scherz, because he might possibly recognise her as Charlotte and not Letitia Blacklock, so why not a quiet murder? Why all these plans to fake a burglary and all that, which is sure to attract attention from the police??
Not entirely characteristic of Agatha Christie's usually no-nonsense way of solving mysteries, but the surreal and supernaturalistic elements of these stories had me intrigued. I found the mysterious Mr. Quin fascinating, yet perplexing at the same time. Is he real? Or is he just a figment of the imagination? Just as I've pinned him down as a ghostly hallucination, other character in the novel attest to his presence in the setting. He barely interacts with anyone, but his presence serves as a catalyst for our narrator, Mr. Satterthwaite, to get things going. Satterthwaite makes for a rational, clear-headed narrator because of his specialty in life: being the observant wallpaper. In a sense, he takes away most of the narrative work of building up other characters because he simply can read them as they are, rather than letting the readers figure out their personalities for ourselves. Nevertheless, there is something a little pitiful and a little endearing about Satterthwaite and the way life has passed him by. On the whole, The Mysterious Mr. Quin would be a good read for those with a little preference for the mystical and inexplicable, but if you're looking for something clear-headed like Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple stories, this isn't really for you.
I've only read this book the one time when I was a kid, and it has never left my memory ever since.
When I learnt more about astronomy (which I have also always loved as a kid), Sirius the Dog Star was never the same. From then until today, every time I hear Sirius being referenced (whether star or Harry Potter character), there'd be that really tiny blip at the back of my brain that harkens back to this book.
Today, I have almost no idea what the book was about because I read it that long ago, but I remember clearly what it made me feel. I didn't like it then as much as I did Howl's Moving Castle, but the ending surely stuck.
And this makes me love Diana Wynne Jones all the more for having moulded my childhood with her words.
To be frank, I only made it about 20% in to this (and it's not even a long read).
The book begins with Harriett taking a solitary walk, as Regency ladies always do apparently, and happening upon Lieutenant Jamison as he rides up to Tanglewood on his unruly steed, Wicked. She raises a hand in greeting, but the Lieutenant does not notice her and, in galloping so quickly by her, splashes her with mud.
And that's it. That's the entire premise for Harriett's sudden and deeply entrenched belief that the Lieutenant is no gentleman, even though he later attempts to apologise (multiple times) for it. Perhaps one could argue that his first apology might be construed as insincere but don't they have better things to expend their energy upon than holding grudges because someone didn't notice you on the road and splashed your dress with mud?!
Harriett felt like a spoilt child with no capacity for understanding and forgiveness, and no sense of humour in this first 20% of the book. Their immediate mutual attraction despite this misunderstanding felt contrived and unbelievable in the face of their clear incompatibility of personalities. The lieutenant doesn't do much except chuckle and laugh attractively, so I didn't really care much for him either.
DNF at 22%. Frankly, I enjoyed the movie more. The protagonist is an Austen fangirl who seems to reinforce all the worst stereotypes of being an Austen fangirl: obsessive, and ashamed of liking Austen. Miss Charming was insufferable, and overall I just found it boring.
This book is serviceable, but there's something very bland about the writing style that doesn't grip me quite as much. Not to mention, it's set in gritty Victorian London and really does not filter some of the incredibly abrasive and problematic views in those times, touching upon subjects like anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and racism. It seems like almost all the non-Jewish subjects that Barker and Llewelyn interview have some incredibly controversial opinion to air, and then B&L will just sort of follow up with a “he's crazy!” sort of thing (and not even to these subjects' faces) so us readers will know we can support our protagonists. I don't know, it just felt a bit too repetitive to me in the end. I stopped at about the 50% mark of the book and even at this point, I couldn't find myself invested in the central conflict in the book: the anti-Semitic movement that B&L are trying to combat. It's not that I don't care, but it just wasn't written in a way that I felt very invested in or that I found productive.
So, eh.
Eh. I really tried. I got about 10 chapters in before I decided to give up on this.
It isn't so much that there's a serious plot going on besides all your regular insta-lust and romancey things - in fact, I like it when a romance novel has a bit more substance than just “I see you, I want you, I love you”. I stuck with this book for even 10 chapters because I was actually interested in seeing where it was going to go with the plot.
What eventually made me give up on it, however, is that I just don't really quite enjoy it when the writing takes itself too seriously. I'm not asking for irreverent humour all the time, but there were way too many cringey one-liners that I kept getting distracted by.
Example:
- Damn his eyes. Damn his letter. Damn that smile, the one that made her want to kiss him back, just so she could know that she'd put that light inside him. [...]It struck her, that want, like a sharp first to her solar plexus--painful and paralyzing. She didn't just want. She hoped. She needed. She dreamed that this time, when she was revealed to the crowd for what she really was, they wouldn't mob around her and throw stones. This time, they couldn't call her a beast or the spawn of the devil. This time, instead of stripping her of everything, someone would love her for who she was.A yearning like that was too big for the person she had to be.
Tl;dr the story was fine and fairly interesting, but the delivery was too cringey and distracting that I had to DNF at Ch 10.
There is a very inherent Eurocentrism to this book that the author doesn't seem to even want to hide. At first I thought it was just McClusky being a “bad” character with her off-putting black and white views on history, but I DNFed a little over halfway through the book and I still never got the feeling that McClusky was really meant to be that severely censured.
“Let's face it, for better or worse the last half dozen centuries on earth have been shaped by what we like to call Western civilization. ... When did Europe lose its way? When did its worst ideals triumph over its best? ... When, in short, did the most influential continent on the planet wilfully and without duress screw up on a scale unequalled in all history and in one insane moment go from hero to zero, from top dog to underdog?”“The insane, perverse, wilful self-desutrction of a collective culture that had been four thousand years in the making, smashed utterly almost overnight. Never to rise again, and giving way in its stead to a genocidal global hotchpotch of half-baked fanaticism from both left and right.”“Prior to that point the world was an increasingly peaceful place in which science and society were developing towards the common good.”“You might feel differently about that if you were a Native American, or an indigenous Australian. Or an African in the Belgian Congo-““Oh come ON, Hugh! I'm not saying anything was or ever could be remotely perfect. [...] Men will always take what isn't theirs, the strong will always exploit the weak - no amount of historical tinkering could ever stop that.”“Just try to imagine what the world would be like now if it had never happened - if the great nations of Europe had continued on their journey to peace, prosperity and enlightenment; if those millions of Europe's best and finest young men, the most highly educated and civilized generation the world had ever known, had not died in the mud but had instead survived to shape the twentieth century.” Stanton could see her point. [...] “You're right. Can't fault your argument. 1914 was the year of true catastrophe.”
Stanton gaping at how much pubic hair women actually had...