Earwen
NOT a good first japanese novel unless you are in a hurry to learn how to describe various gross smells
My opinion on the actual work is kind of mixed but I also feel like my jp level was below ideal for this, and any review would be unfair.
Not to mention, it took me about 2 years to read, which also isn't ideal for a decent review.
for the whole series: it starts of strong with its ups and downs, the best part is shortly after the first timeskip. After the 2nd timeskip it kind of goes to shit.
Great art throughout though.
Also there is a scene where a character is asked if he gained weight and he replies my suit is packed with explosives which i need to remember as a reply
Solid but not much more.
The world is interesting, but unfortunately I don't feel the author is confident enough in their own writing to pull off a fantasy story. Whenever there is a conflict that is bigger than interpersonal, it happens off screen, or is cut short. Which results in a. a rushed feeling climax and b. the paladin character coming across as kind of a huge loser (which i guess was kind of charming but nto sure if it was intentional).
The character interactions (Which, if you take this as a romance more than a fantasy should be more important anyway) are mostly good, but I found the development also a bit sudden towards the end.
Though the leads really needed to have sex at some point. It can be offscreen or not, I don't really care, it's not that I wanted to read a sex scene as much as I feel that the several scenes that seem to have almost-ended-in-sex in the end have no resolution.
So this basically results in a climax that is the leads agreeing: they are in love, then a lackluster plot resolution, and then nothing. There was no real climax emotionally or plot wise. So , I don't know, it wasn't bad or anything, but it kind of was lackluster.
All that said, this is still a head above most lesbian romances. It's solidly written for the most part, and the characters are likeable.
Some quotes I liked, for varying reasons
I shoot Mr. Allomby a conspiratorial glance. We're not actually conspiring, but it's important to look at people like that every now and then because that's how real relationships are forged.
I think, in parentheses, about Menéndez. The two curved lines bend toward each other, trapping Menéndez inside my head and my head inside the parentheses . . .
I tell him that monogamy, like all artificial things, is absolutely necessary because man invents only what he needs. My aphorism leaves him speechless.
This was, unfortunately, bad on a technical level, the prose is choppy, the tense keeps switching mid paragraph. Half the page count is dedicated to describing food and dress, which drove me insane. I'm still not sure if they were intentionally trying to emulate american psychos brand name dropping in a way, or just juvenile writing, as this problem of over describing needless details is something I see most often in debut ya fiction. A lot of details are given haphazardly with no rhyme or reason, Melanie's backstory is seemingly randomly inserted throughout. While the information in it is relevant (certainly more so than what flavor of milkshake she is drinking that chapter), often it disrupts the flow.
Characters acted over the top, talking normally one second and yelling the next. It made sense for the main character, but everyone talked like that. I'm once again unsure if this was done intentionally or not. I suppose not every book benefits from realistic characters. Though I think it would nice if other characters were more down to earth to contrast with Melanie here.
A lot of the passages about Melanie's clients were unnecessary, and more a bit confusing on how she has this much detail. For example why is a wifebeater giving the details of his lifelong abuse of his wife randomly out? Although the narration is omniscient, it is also often outright stated Melanie has similar information as the reader does. The details on the child victim were wholly unnecessary. I don't think the story benefited from it in any way.
Despite all my complaining at some point, something clicked and I decided to enjoy it like a b-movie. I didn't mind the characters anymore at that point. I genuinely started enjoying it a lot. This is the closest we have to Lesbian American Psycho. It's not the most polished work in the world but I can't deny it was fun.
I feel bad ragging on an indie title, especially one I ultimately recommend, but I can't not point out my problems. Maybe that I liked the book despite all my complaints could serve as a recommendation in itself.
Here are some cws because there is a lot and not all is obvious Obvious ones, death, a lot of descriptions of dead bodies, a lot of gross medical stuffAbleism, directed at the main character. The main character is autistic and she is obviously, kind of not a great person to put it mildly, you could consider it ableist on a meta level depending on how you read this. Racism, bullyingcheating & domestic violenceNecrophilia, graphic, kind of...arguably consensual? I don't even know man rape, child abuse including sexual abuse not descriptive but on page, not really relevant to the actual story. Oh and kidnapping. literally. see above my comment on it being unnecessary.
This book is honestly so funny I've been thinking of it everyday since i read it
-keeps getting on ships despite EVERY TİME he does so he either gets scared shitless, attacked by pirates, taken as slave, ship capsizes, etc. Even after the whole island thing a few years later he goes back on a ship.
-Robinson has two cats that he brings to the island , there are also wild cats on the island. He later sees a bunch of new kittens that seem to be a mix and doesn't understand where they came from
-when he converts Friday, Friday is confused about why god allows satan to exists, crusoe has a crisis of faith and gets sick. Eventually he manages to explain it to Friday, who clearly still thinks its stupid
-friday fantasizes about taking him back to his home island and make him teach the people there. crusoe grows jealous because he thinks thatsomehow translated of wanting to leave him.
-he spends months making a ship that he has no way to actually bring to water. He later once he has more people attempts to make a ship again. This time he makes it too small for all those people.
-he voices he would rather be eaten by cannibals than go to spain
-walks around with like, 5 guns. he would have loved shooters.
-“first of all I married, and that not either to my disadvantage or dissatisfaction”
-the literal full title of the book “The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates. Written by Himself.”
“written by himself” isn't the only lie in it.
reread this while reading [b:A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto 61279009 A Spectre, Haunting On the Communist Manifesto China Miéville https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1660079932l/61279009.SY75.jpg 58440526] and also read the turkish translation and original german. the original german was surprisingly... less dramatic than the english version. The wording is just more straightforward and the evocative passages kind of fall flat in the original. Although granted, this could be just me not being as good as german as I think I am. The turkish version is barely readable, it feels so needlessly complicated. If I wasn't familiar with the original I'd have put it down. Was interesting to see how much translation changes the experience. Feels weird to rate this but I don't like leaving stuff unrated so 5 stars as a commie
Maybe if you aren't familiar with any non-cis people this book might be interesting as a sort of informative entry point. While this is perhaps rude to say about someones memoirs, I just didn't feel like it had anything interesting to say. Just a recounting of the authors life, particularly experiences regarding eir gender identity. It wasn't particularly insightful, or thought provoking, or failing that even funny. The events are often randomly put together non-chronologically, as if they're not meant to be a full narrative but random comics the author wrote one at a time (I am unsure if this is the case or not). Things were often brought up and then not followed up on, which is the authors right but in a memoir, why bring them up in the first place if you have no interest in following up? The most interesting portions of eir life was probably childhood, but these parts were mostly glossed over. It ended abruptly, I was reading it digitally and thought I had an issue with my copy. Maybe if the author had written this a few years later, they would have matured more in their storytelling, and put their insights into gender identity in a more succinct, insightful way.
(On a more personal and more unfair note: there is far too much about fanfiction in this? Particularly one direction fanfiction, honestly it just made me feel embarrassed for everyone involved. One direction fanfiction of all things.)
Ultimately focuses too much on contemporary authors. I don't think many people picking up a book on a relatively niche topics wouldn't know Anne Rice, or even Kathe Koja, or Shirley Jackson. I'd rather it focused on older and lesser known classic authors and gave each more space instead of talking about authors horror fans will already be familiar with.
edit: I keep thinking about this book, and the more I think about it, the more I dislike it. In the end, it really was so juvenile, and worse, boring. I'm lowering my score to reflect my feelings on it, if 2 stars means “it was ok” it definitely doesn't deserve it in my eyes.
original review below
I found this book to be too ambitious for it's own good, tried to do too many things, didn't really do any of them, threw in a very stream of consciousness rant at the end, which I'm sure was intentional but reading it I couldn't help but feel like it was a cop out. Maybe if you throw everything in your mind at the wall, it will look like the resolution of a narrative. In general I found too many large sections in this already small book, to be of little substance.
The lack of subtlety, not an inherent fault nor something I expected out of a book that starts with stating it is about fascism, at times got to the point of being comedic. In the same chapter the TERF character mentions her discomfort with trans women in bathrooms not only are we told (otherwise irrelevantly) that a trans woman was in fact shitting next to her earlier, but she also gets sexually harassed by another woman.
Something I found odd, was the lack of tying the TERF movement more directly to other forms of the alt-right. In my experience a lot of terfs are bigoted in many other ways, and happy to throw in their lot with other alt-right, anti-lgbt, misogynist groups. But the terf women are portrayed surprisingly sympathetically all in all, they seem to at least, be well intentioned at some level. They're are liberal (“liberal”) women, academics, and the only one of importance besides the co-lead is a lesbian who almost assaults her (I assume based on a well known terf lesbian who also was alleged to do similiar). Of course those as portrayed in the book exists too but when the rest of the book deals with swastikas, and nazis, alt-right the omission feels strange. The closest to it is several mentions of how white the terf goup is. But perhaps this is just a side effect of the short length combined with trying to juggle too many topics.
Lastly, this book draws intentional comparisons between itself and The Haunting Of Hill House, Hill House is a short book.It manages to be complex in it themes and concise yet beautiful in it's language, but also subtle. This is none of those things, and it doesn't have to be, but Tthe multiple callbacks of to the opening paragraph of hill house (which I love!) are beat over the head , at first it's almost cute then it's just pointless.
The chapters focusing on the now are decent but anything future centric is based on the faulty premise that AGI isn't only possible, or even plausible , but inevitable. There is no real justification given for this fantasy but reiterated again and again (“I am sure that..” why?). So more than half of this is the equivalent of being based on the premise of the moon being made of cheese.
In the end a lot of the essays were a real stretch to connect to AI anyway. There also were no less than 3 essays focused on misogyny, besides the one focusing on sex bots I found them out of place.
The last thing is, at some point she calls COVID-19 nature's way of culling humans, that “perhaps should be accepted”. I am taking this out of context but there is no context that will make it more acceptable to say perhaps these deaths should be accepted. What a callous thing to say especially considering how overwhelmingly it kills people in risk groups already.
2.5 or so? compelling and addicting read but i was mildly to moderately irritated the whole way through. Competently written but afterwards it felt me felt kind of empty and like I did something wrong, like watch a particularly trashy reality tv show. I don't think this book has necessarily no substance but whatever it was trying to do is lost on me. I was too busy being annoyed at every single character in this. And yes sure the main character is “flawed” but it's more than that I think every single character that called her out on it (heavyhandedly) was just as bad. I simply wasn't convinced of anyones friendship with each other, which the book hinges on. Gonna keep this at 2 or change it to 3 when I see how much it stays with me.
This could use another round of editing or three but still very enjoyable despite really not liking the pairings interactions so far, somehow. Honestly I have more negative things to say about it than positive but it was just such an easy and fun read at the end of the day and I will continue with the series.
Note: author posted a continuation of the story here https://archiveofourown.org/works/12859701
I loved this but the events in this book could have been 2 separate books!! Especially the last two chapters had so much packed in. Then again reading those made me anxious on what would happen next so maybe I shouldn't complain it was over quickly.
