Elizabeth
Historical fantasy set in Prague? Shut up and take my money.
The blurb says Witcher cross VE Schwab fans, but I'm not sold on that. Witcher, because of the Eastern European setting/names for demons. VE Schwab - I'm guessing is for A Darker Shade of Magic, but I got more Rivers of London vibes (without the humour).
This is an urban fantasy set in 1868 Prague. Our hero Domek is a lamplighter, but lamplighters protect the night streets from demons - mainly pijavice (literally translated as leech, they're vampires). In a normal work shift, Domek stumbles across The Mystery. Of course, our heroine (and love interest) is a pijavica, and also stumbles across The Mystery. If you've ever read a book, I think you can see where the story is going. Just like a good, cosy detective story, all loose ends are tidy and every one (who survives) gets a happily ever after (for now).
Anyway: an enjoyable read, a great debut, a love letter to Prague, and a standalone historical urban fantasy.
I can't believe I didn't find this as a young adult obsessed with dystopias, but in 1993 YA wasn't a genre and this certainly wasn't marketed at me. It didn't hit as hard as I expected, and I think that's a combination of growing up on this type of story (if you read Australian YA in the 90s, you know), but also, it's...happening. It's entirely conceivable. It could be inevitable. The story starts in 2024, and that's eighteen months from when I first read it. Maybe that's the scary part for readers.
The parts I found more interesting to sink my brain-teeth into were Lauren-as-Prophet. Lauren tells the story through journal entries and extracts from the religious text she's building around her created religion, Earthseed. Both Lauren and Butler are former Baptists, and the exploration of an (intentionally) simplistic reaction and adaptation of Christianity into something that meets Lauren's needs and hopes. The goal of Earthseed is to fulfill the destiny of leaving Earth and heading for the stars; reflecting Laurens goal of abandoning her community - she believes both community and Earth itself can't be sustained in the long-term.
Mostly, I enjoyed the journeys - the physical journey Lauren takes, the followers she collects along the way, the character growth and revelation. Like most dystopia, Lauren keeps her hope in a time of despair and becomes a leader because of it.
Butler noped out of completing the intended series of Earthseed, because it was too depressing to research and write, but the sequel, Parable of the Talents, is on my TBR.
For all that this story started well, creepy and gripping, with religious lockdown of women (hence comparisons with The Handmaid's Tale), the second half fell into well-worn tropes and predictable plot twists. Which might be cool - I don't read much horror so I don't know how much is expected in the genre versus how much is overused.
I found the character development uneven, the leaps of logic unexplained, the dialogue a weird mixture of formal (One character literally apologises for using a “colloquialism” which felt very out of place in an otherwise normal chat with a stranger). The religion-based lockdown on women's behaviour and movement only applied when the author wanted it to?
On the other hand, I still finished it, I still wanted to know what happened, I still wanted the bad guy to get their comeuppance and the good guy to win. I think it's a good, scary debut.
This is firmly horror, to the point that my brain was giving me utterly pedestrian dreams such as going to the shops, and doing my favourite work tasks.
I felt very clever at picking up on the thread here of finding home as an adult, of returning ‘home' (even if when that home is a place that no longer exists) and creating ‘home'. Of taking events that happen to you when you're young and letting them be part of you, but not all of you. Of the consequences of surviving. And then Kay explains all this in the afterword, and I felt less insightful.
All the Seas picks up four years after A Brightness Long Ago, whose main thread is an event that happened in the past and how that shaped the narrator of that story. That narrator is in this tale too, as well as many people you've already met from Brightness and also Children of Earth and Sky, set twenty years after All the Seas. They wind together, as you'd expect from Kay.
I don't know that this is as strong as others I've read by Kay, but is that just because it's my first reading? I find they need at least a re-read to solidify what they have to share with me. It's absolutely solid Kay, in that you're getting a large cast, a sweeping tale, events that change lives in unexpected ways, and of course no neat ending. It'll stand alone, but I think you'll get more out of it having read Brightness first.
Full disclosure: I've known the author for a bajillion internet years (this is an actual measurement of time) and she sent me an ARC.
I can't even tell you how fun this was - cosy tropes encased in beautiful language and FEELS, because obviously. Mage from the slums who can do ‘impossible' things, because he hasn't been taught they're impossible. Should-be debutante who instead hangs out with the lower classes and gets her eyes opened to social and class injustice. A fight against prejudice and authoritarianism.
BUT ALSO, inter- and extra-planar shenanigans, a cracking pace, a delicious romance (FEELS), and a sidekick I did not see coming.
I absolutely loved this one. It's a reflection on reading practice within the framework of Aristotelian virtue ethics (Young is a philosopher). Taking examples of writers and philosophers on their reading habits, mixed with Young's own reading memoir, this has definitely influenced the way I approach reading, and hopefully will influence my future reading too.
I can see why fans of the How To Do Life genre are losing their minds over this one, but it was basically 250 pages of reinforcing conclusions I'd already made about How To Do (My) Life. So, nothing new or revelatory, but also it's nice to see those thoughts articulated cogently and by someone who is not me.
I think constraining the story to historical figures did this story a disservice - or maybe this is not the story for this particular setting. Having to include Actual Events felt like shoe-horning in plot points that didn't need to be there (or play out that way), and the timescale gives the story breadth at the cost of depth. The lack of depth (and the age of the characters when the story begins) gives the novel a solid YA vibe. Readable but really nothing to sink your teeth into.
Like all memoir, I found this one equal parts insightful, naff, and self-indulgent, depending on what resonated with me and what I thought just belaboured the metaphor. If I were not the same age as May, having already learned the same lessons about burn out, toxic workplace, chronic illness, motherhood, and the unexpected things that flank attack you, I might have enjoyed it more. It's a short one though - it might be worth your time.
Aside from a few obvious plot-wagons, I enjoyed this one. It is lovely to be in Nynaeve's POV - she is exactly the ass-kicking lady I like to see in my fantasy. I loved that we barely saw Rand at all, and I wonder how unusual this device was when Jordan wrote the book. I also really enjoyed getting POVs from Mat, since he was a really unlikeable character in the first two novels because of Plot Device. Surprisingly, his 'luck' didn't bother me either even with the potential for it to become an abused trope. In fact, I'm interested to see how both Jordan and Mat handle it's removal in the future.
The only part that really stood out was that, having come through the whole book without Rand, he gets the climactic scene. The rest of Rand's story in this book was told by other people, and it would have been cool if they could have told his fight and 'killing' of Ba'alzamon. Maybe it didn't make sense to do it that way, but it really annoyed me that I had come so far with everyone else, only to have Rand have the ‘glory' at the end, rather than everyone else's reactions to it.
For a first outing, this isn't so bad. If you're into the absolute fine details of flight, space flight, space agencies and 70s cold war political strategy, you'll enjoy it. The page-turning element you want from a thriller is there. The characterisation and POV is wobbly, however, and could throw you from the story easily.
It feels like a paint-by-numbers, in which all the elements and plot beats a book needs are there, but in an unrefined way. Hadfield could definitely make a great thriller writer with more practice at smoothing the edges, and I would read the next one.
My overwhelming feeling towards this book is ‘eh'. I didn't ever feel compelled to not put the book down, and it shows in that it took me five months to finish it. I felt like we were just killing time for the first three-quarters of the book (is this where [a:Brandon Sanderson 38550 Brandon Sanderson https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1394044556p2/38550.jpg] learned that annoying habit?), and even when Stuff was happening at the end the only person I felt was really doing something was Nynaeve (how much ass does she kick? I love her.)I will read the next one ([b:The Dragon Reborn 11203967 The Dragon Reborn (Wheel of Time, #3) Robert Jordan https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1343770673s/11203967.jpg 791061]), but I'm going to tackle other things on the TBR pile first.
If you were thinking “I'd like a novel with the same humour as The Witcher, but set in medieval Europe and throw in some Czech heretics, but also I like magic and demons and shit”, then why are you in my head and also this is the book for you.
A very silly romp, in that our hero doesn't stop thinking with his dick and then has to extricate himself from increasingly tricky situations.
If you're not as familiar or as keen on the history of the European church and it's dissenters as I am, skip the background chapter at the start - you don't need it.
I also genuinely forgot this is the start of a trilogy until I was on the last page wondering how it would wrap up, so the prospect of more pleases me greatly.
For what is essentially LOTR With Chicks, it's a much more readable story than Tolkein's trilogy. I was doing all right with the usual eye-rolling fantasy tropes until I got to the ‘Mountains of Dhoom'. Yeah, the book is nearly 25 years old, but really. Overall though, I enjoyed it and will probably slog through the rest of them.
I hadn't heard of this before I picked it up in a (real life!) bookshop, but apparently it garnered plenty of attention when it was published last year. And with good reason, I think.
It's the story of a woman, Esme, framed by the compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary, the way the meaning of words are shaped by use (as her own life's meaning is shaped by use), the words/lives considered worthy or unworthy of recording for posterity and who gets to decide that worth.
I enjoyed this one: slow and character-driven, no high drama, some tearful moments. I would have appreciated a content warning, but it's seriously spoilery and it would have ruined the moment, but I leave it here for you: childbirth, child loss, adoption .
The final chapter and the epilogue continue past Esme's work on the Dictionary, and I feel the book would have been stronger without it. Ditte's final letter would have been the perfect end-point, in my mind although clearly Megan's lecture shows Esme's work given the public attention she hoped it would someday achieve .
I really dithered between 2 and 3 stars here (I like the GR guide rating, 2 means it was ok).
This is a big book full a diverse cast and massive worldbuilding, and I think it's aiming for too much in a single volume. The biggest criticism I've read is that the Epic Life Or Death Showdown (not a spoiler if you've ever read a book) is over in mere minutes, which I agree, but also I enjoyed because I find epic battle scenes tedious to read.
There are a lot of cast members, none of whom get enough screen time, and maybe I would have preferred a trilogy here (although let's be honest, I probably would only read the first one anyway). The big concepts and worldbuilding tackled in a YA breadth, not depth, style; of course this is fine, but felt hollow to me here. A deep dive into each of the cultures we met would have been awesome.
By 75% I was extremely ready for the book to be over, having read enough Fine, not Great story for 200 pages, and still having another 200 pages ahead of me. It's a perfectly ok story, and you'll likely enjoy it because you're not a book curmudgeon like me.
