Lauren
This book was not my type of book. That is not to say it is bad - far from it. Roxane Gay's voice is superb. Each chapter is like having coffee with a trusted friend who isn't shy about speaking her mind. It was just, for me, this friend was into different things than me.
I most enjoyed the chapters from the last 100 pages or so of the book, where she is writing about current (well, 2014-current) events. It was a stark reminder of what has changed in our American world since that time. I appreciated the viewpoint that Roxane Gay brought to those events, and remembering them through the lens of her writing helped me remember them in new ways. I also appreciated greatly her chapters on being a bad feminist, on whether we can “do” feminism or being a woman “correctly”.
I enjoyed less - and got stuck on - the chapters with the many pop culture references to books, television shows, and films that I have never consumed. It is my fault for not having the cultural vocabulary to interact with those chapters properly. I still found her voice compelling but because of the reliance on information from these other mediums, I found myself struggling to keep up. But I knew from her writing that these were very important to her and I enjoyed her reveling in the objects of culture.
I would read other things by Roxane Gay, hoping for more of what was in the last part of this book.
I read this book for me, to help frame the anxiety and nervousness that seem to come with daily life nowadays. I found most of the very short, bite sized chapters to be delightful. Some of them made me smile, and some of them made me contemplate. I appreciated the author's straightforward truth telling and his candid sharing of his own history. While my experience of the world is different from his, I appreciated the encouragement he shared, even when it was a raw thing. I'll be keeping this one close and returning to it when everything seems like too much.
I enjoyed this book as much as the first one in the duology. For this one, I particularly enjoyed the complexity and the array of relationships between the characters - many father-child relationships, some adoptive relationships, some lovers, some friends old a now. Hanani was a confusing if sympathetic character; I was unsure of how she made it into the Hetawa and what event caused her to be there, the first woman among men, and it didn't become clear throughout the book like I thought it would. I also liked how her path changed through the story, from being a healer and devotee of the goddess Hananja, to being an unwilling carrier of an important and political task, to being a surprise consort to an important person. Wanahomen, on the other hand, I was not too certain of throughout the book - I wasn't sure that he was a truly good person, and I don't think that was resolved by the end either. I found myself not sure of Wanahomen but hoping that he would find the right way; this sentiment was, perhaps, shared by many of the characters in the book. That made Wanahomen believable and real.
I was not, on the other hand, a fan of Tiaanet's story and her relationship with her father. While it makes sense that such evil would exist in the world and the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father made for an interesting contrast to Hanani's relationship with Mni-inh her mentor and Wanahomen's adoration of his father, it was disturbing to read. Her relationship with Tantufi was warped by this situation, and as it became clear their relationship with the events of the city, I found myself hoping for a kinder outcome for them.
All in all, an enjoyable fantasy experience; it was nice to have a non-European style setting for a fantasy, and I did enjoy the Egyptian / Nubian inspired setting.
This book moves quickly, and like many of Jemisin's works, plunges you into the world from the first page. I found the first few chapters slow going, but once we got about a quarter of the way in, I was hooked.
I had trouble understanding the dreamblood/dreambile/dreamichor/dreamseed construct throughout the book, and it was only when I got to the glossary (duh) that I was able to understand. The definitions there made sense, and it is perhaps a side-effect of the ereader that I didn't think to look there earlier.
I enjoyed the implied relationship between Nijiri and Ehiru in this book, and the complex journey of an apprentice being thrust into adulthood/journeyman status far too soon. This was portrayed delicately in the book, and Nijiri's perspective made the world more understandable.
I enjoyed this book, and we finally got the Nigerians in Space that were promised in the first book!
I enjoyed that Wale from the first book also appeared in this one. The premise of the book is that a solar flare wiped out much of the planet, and places in a band around the equator were spared while the Global North (basically) falls apart. Nigeria and its fledgling space program must save an astronaut trapped at the International Space Station.
Meanwhile, the flare also activated some ancient technology - which may be alien enough to be considered magic - that can be manipulated through a few people who know the right songs. An African-American engineer and his Indian sound engineer friend navigate the clash of their world at the space center (ground control), the local culture which is being terrorized by a future version of Boko Haram, and the rising “magic” of a nomadic group of women out for revenge.
It's a mystery, science fiction, urban magic, and anti-colonial and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
I was promised Nigerians in space, and instead, I got three interwoven stories, one of which was about a lunar geologist who really wants to go to space but instead spends most of his time in an observatory trying not to get killed after being scammed - maybe - as part of a “Brain Gain” program to lure Nigeria's best scientists back to the country to revitalize the nation. But no Nigerians in space.
I don't even know what to say about this book besides that I really enjoyed it, besides the fact that there were none of the promised Nigerians in space. The stories are bizarre - an unsuspecting dude gets caught up in a weird abalone smuggling ring, a young girl with a skin condition unexpectedly becomes a supermodel after hiding herself behind a niqab her whole life, and said lunar geologist has a kid and then winds up in South Africa where all of these stories eventually intersect. Then we discover that the scam artist (?) who tried to lure all the scientists - including Wale, our geologist - back to the country has been holed up under house arrest, and the space program for Nigeria is not, in fact, going to happen.
And all the abalone die, and maybe the geologist's son sells his lamps successfully to the abalone smugglers, and the supermodel doesn't find her dad - but at least there's another book after this that might have Nigerians in space?
I think this book may have made me reconsider that “space” might not actually mean outer space, but rather Nigerians taking up space, being made visible, having stories that are not fully their own that must be reckoned with and read by you and me.
I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I loved the atmosphere, I loved how we got into the head of a Crow with many lives, and I enjoyed how the language of Dar Oakley became familiar by the end of the book.
In this story, a Crow named Dar Oakley (who discovered names, really) steals the Most Important Thing, and then loses it. For his folly, he is granted an eternal life. Though he dies, he always comes back, and he always remembers.
This book tells the story of this Crow and, in fact, all Crows and their interaction with People. From the Iron Age to a time like ours (maybe a little bit in the future), we see People and our actions from the eyes of a Crow.
I enjoyed the device of this book, which was the Crow telling an old man his story, and then the old man translating it into language that we can read and understand. Because the old man is near death himself, perhaps that is how he can understand Dar Oakley. Through Dar Oakley's travels we meet Fox Cap, the Singer, the Brother, many other crows including one who was caged, and a crow hunter who makes it his mission to kill Dar Oakley. Dar Oakley ventures into a realm beyond life, showing how Crows got their status as psychopomps, and through his eyes we see a spirit realm that humans can barely understand.
The names and the stories and the atmosphere were engaging, and though I've always thought crows were smart, I enjoyed getting inside their heads a little bit in this book.
I was glad to find, at the end of this book, that I had read the book the “right” way. During the many anecdotes and bits of advice about starting a nonviolent revolution, I kept thinking about movements that I've been part of and the little things that fit in here. Getting groups on your side of the line, making connections through small early work instead of going for the big thing right away, and the various different ways that people can contribute to an organization like this. I kept thinking of examples that I had seen - many from the Open Education movement - and then trying to think of more. Right now I'm asking myself questions about how I can get some other groups on my side of the line.
The book is charmingly narrated and enjoyable to read. It also gives little insights into big world happenings that many of us may have only seen the news stories about. I enjoyed “meeting” some of the people through Srdja's narrative throughout the book, and I appreciated the down-to-earth tone. I also realized that I have a lot to learn!
This book was fine - it was quick to read and fun. The plot is basically that a variety of hackers are “appropriated” by an arm of the US government ostensibly to do some kind of white hat work... except they wind up releasing a super intelligent AI that is made up of a bunch of human brains linked together in the grossest way possible. The heroes (zeroes) are unlikeable in a variety of ways, and while the book does a good job of weaving the plot together via many interesting devices, I didn't really have much of a reaction to it besides “hm, interesting”. The plot was tight but the characters were not that interesting after their opening scenes. I don't know that I'll read any following books.
I enjoy a little space opera with a little romance built in; that's exactly what this book is. A lot of reviews and recommendations for this book mentioned Firefly in discussions of this book, and I can see where they are coming from. A “crew” of misfits operating at the edges of the law is a timeless story, and Firefly is the iconic one of those that is set in space. But if you're looking for Firefly, this isn't quite that, and it's best to enjoy it as a character study and a M/M romance set in space.
I enjoyed the hint of the world that we got around the character interaction plot of this story. I liked the super soldier story as well as the seemingly pointless stellar war between races that was only stopped by the intervention of a vaguely creepy ultra-powerful species. Romances are often thin on the plot and the world building, and I appreciated the care and interest taken in the world of this one.
The tense romantic encounters between lovers who had been unfairly separated by circumstances beyond their control was great, too. :D
This book was so boring I found myself skipping whole pages. It also has way too many long passages in which the main character is somehow obsessed with penises, which strangely alternate with oddly specific product placements. This book hits about every stereotypical trope against women, including the gentle giant who just wants to have a baby, the mother who abandons her child, the precocious child who runs away. The wife gets fridged, too. I can't believe I suffered through this book; about all I can say for it is that it was less annoying than Pohl's “Gateway”.
This book was a welcome spin on the Lovecraft universe, perfect for the month of October if you're looking for a creepy/spooky read and not a scary one. The particular spin that this book takes is setting a Black family from Chicago and their friends, in Jim Crow 1950s era USA, against white New Englander Lovecraftian cultist types. Complete with spells and secret books and monsters coming out doors, this book has all the Lovecraf flavor while still reminding us that the true monsters are the humans.
“What did you think?” asks Goodreads.
“I... don't know?” I respond, still questioning whether I really knew what any of the characters did on board the spaceship.
Startide Rising was really slow going at the beginning. This being the second book in a series that I did not bother reading the first book from, I figured that was my fault for not knowing what was going on. But reading the other reviews, perhaps I am not alone.
The plot of this book is fantastically simple. Starship crashes on a planet and must be repaired. After repairs, the ship must escape the giant pan-galactic war going on in the skies over the planet, and that war is about what's being carried on the ship. It's nice to return to a plot that doesn't require a flow chart and network analysis (as much current sci-fi seems to).
However, the book was slow because of endless silly interaction choices. Humans have genetically modified (“uplifted”) dolphins to... be starship pilots, whatever. I love dolphins so I'm willing to suspend some disbelief here. There are some cool accessories that dolphins use like their “spider” walkers and these underwater sleds that they and humans use to get around. I liked that aspect of it because it reminded me of a lot of the “accessories” that aliens use to get around in some other sci-fi media, but which are now being used for a familiar species to Earth people.
I liked the fun linguistic stuff about how dolphins and humans and the aliens communicate.
I did not like the heavy-handed racism metaphors. I did not like the weird sexual interactions that came out of nowhere. The dolphin Sahot hitting on the human Dennie without her consent and them constantly having to go do things together gave me workplace sexual harassment anger. And then, like much 1980s media, the woman who is harassed by the man finally gives in and then becomes sexually liberated somehow (including maybe or not having a threesome with a dolphin and a human?). There is an epic chase and fight scene between two sects of dolphins that is very exciting and fun, until randomly they start talking about dolphin erections and sex play in the middle of it.
The final escape scene involves someone who seemed to have been a doctor up until now suddenly turning into a deft and clever captain of a starship who executes a bunch of very seemingly clever space maneuvers and I just wonder how she had that knowledge?
That was another one of my troubles with this book - I was really not sure what anyone did on board the spaceship. I knew that the one dolphin was the de-facto captain, but he then turned into some kind of shamanistic mystic. The woman who I thought was a doctor and geneticist turned out to be the captain. There is a random dolphin doing mission work who turns out to be a linguist. Then there is a random chimpanzee who is a planetologist and blows everything up because he's also an explosions expert? And more and more random dolphins with highly specific skills keep appearing and disappearing, some of them with weird genetic manipulations, and I really just got lost. It seemed like everybody on board the ship knew how to do everything, and I couldn't keep track of their characters because of that.
In sum, I liked some parts of this and found other parts silly. This double Hugo and Nebula winner seems to epitomize 1980s media to me, but in science fiction form. I'm not sure I really liked it, but I know I didn't totally hate it.
A classic of the genre and very much written in a pulpy style of “this happened, then this happened, then science, and a crucial character wasn't who you thought all along!” The premise of the next step of human evolution is interesting, and the history and social structures of the slans was the most interesting part. This book did end rather abruptly, and without a resolution for the main conflict. However, the cliffhanger makes for a good reason to read the next book if you liked the first one.
This book wasn't what I expected. It's more like a literary study, a piecing together if fragments that tell a tale of the hubris of a king and the consequential death of his people. The story itself is interesting but not very exciting; it doesn't have the finesse of Tolkien's completed works. I found Christopher Tolkien's very extensive notes to be sometimes interesting, more often a deep well of information that I could only see so far into. I enjoyed learning the history of Elrond's parents Eärendil and Elwing, and where they came from. There's a lot of interesting mythology surrounding the good Ulmo as well.
The three stars signify that I thought it was interesting but I don't know if I'd recommend it to anyone who isn't a huge fan of Tolkien's entire body of work.
I had a hard time rating this book.
Synopsis: Lan, Hilo, and Shae are siblings at the head of a clan of magic-wielding gangsters. Lan is in charge, Hilo is his main thug, and Shae has decided the family business isn't for her and gone to another country to pursue a different life. Things get bad and Lan is murdered by rival gangsters, so Hilo must step into leadership and Shae returns to be capable at the family business after all.
The writing was engaging and immersive. The world was interesting, and the characters were not annoying. I enjoyed Shae as a character in particular.
There were a few annoying bits. The interspersed mythology was jarring when key phrases were used in the following chapters. The ending was very clearly setting up for a sequel - what happened to Maik Wen and her white rat job? Why put that scene with the military in there when it had no part in the ending of this book? And poor Anden, freaking out at his ceremony and being disgraced. I'm sure that he comes back in the next book. Along with the grave-robbing Bero, whose betrayal was hinted at so strongly in the beginning.
Overall, I enjoyed reading this book, but some of the writing and plot devices fell flat with me. I might read the next one in the series, although if it's as long as this one was it will take a serious time commitment!
This book delighted me in many of the same ways that the first book did. I loved the use of Public Domain material to make a new and interesting story. I enjoyed the fact that the story was about women - this time on an adventure through some of my most loved parts of Europe - and their connection to each other. I really enjoyed walking with the characters through Vienna and Budapest, remembering what I had seen there and viewing it through their eyes. The language use in the book set the scene; I'm familiar with all the languages used in the book except Hungarian and really enjoyed the sprinkling of language throughout. It gave this book a particular feel to it.
My most beloved part was the Committee on Bibliographic Citation Formats. As a librarian I loved this to pieces and want to join (or create?) a Committee just like it. Maybe I'm already part of one.
I did have to knock off a star because the book got very slow in parts. I know it was because they split the party, but the middle 200 pages slowed way down. There was an awful lot of gnashing of teeth over small things here that I felt just went on a bit too long. But the beginning and the end were marvelous, as I've come to expect from this series now.
I loved this book and I loved how it turned the myths and stories that we read about the Greeks on their heads. This book tells the story of Circe, the Witch of Aiaia, from her own point of view instead of from the men who encountered her. This was a fascinating deep dive into mythology and the world of the Greek gods, and the writing was compelling and interesting to read.
The depth of the stories and the breadth of the research that Madeline Miller must have done is really impressive. I enjoyed the intersections of all the famous heroes and monsters and seeing the connections drawn between them. I also enjoyed Circe's agency and personality a lot; she becomes a three-dimensional character in this telling where she was just a flat archetype before.
I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It has an interesting premise - cloning allows humans to live forever by creating a “mind map” of themselves near the time of their death and implanting that map in a new cloned body in peak form. A few of these clones who had troubled pasts are given a second chance by piloting a generation ship full of humans to a new planet. The idea is that they will continuously clone themselves in order to guide the ship to its destination and then be given a plot of land upon which to build their new lives.
The mystery of this book is that all six of these clones wake up in new bodies 25 years into their journey with no memory of the past 25 years. This book starts you off with a gruesome scene of the clones departing their vats to a murder scene, and they have to figure out what happened and why. The book takes its time to unravel this, giving the reader hints of who might have done it and why throughout. We learn about the pasts of each of the six characters and why they were on this ship - and their mysterious connection to a woman named Mignon.
The more I think about the reveal, the more I like it. Mignon wanted to figure out how to have revenge on her enemies when they can just clone themselves and live again. So she gives them false hope - sending them on a generation ship doomed to fail because she's loaded the crew with criminals who will just kill each other and send the ship back home. The information on the destination planet is also potentially suspect, so they might not be arriving at a safe or habitable place. Once they figure this out - after the murders, of course - the clone criminal crew (that's a mouthful) decide to pull it all together to have the ultimate revenge on the person who did the horrible things to them in the first place. They'll enact their revenge by being successful colonists on an unknown planet, despite all the odds that Mignon has stacked against them. I would be excited to read the next book following this to find out if they are successful.
This book is about the way that music can bring people together, and the ways that people can form unlikely relationships in the strangest of situations. I feel that this book has a message in it about community music as well - that random people (even random terrorists from an unnamed country) can have musical talent unseen, and sometimes undiscovered, and that can bring people together.
Unfortunately, this book suffers from a strange lack of attention to place. For all the multi-lingual and multi-cultural makeup of the trapped hostages and the deftness with which Gen the translator was handled, the “god-forsaken” unnamed country felt strange. It's Peru, and we have no other choice but to accept that it is because the events of this book bear an uncanny resemblance to the events of the Japanese Embassy Hostage Crisis. Why would Peru be erased from this? By not naming the country, we only get the impressions of it, which are summarily negative and often racist.
There was also a lot of psychology in here about Stockholm Syndrome as well as about the creation of community. It was mostly unbelievable. So few people seemed to realize that they were in a dire situation for most of the book. It was hard to suspend my own disbelief. I have a hard time understanding Stockholm Syndrome as it is, and this did not help.
The end of the book was predicated. You could sense it was coming, mostly from the Red Cross representative's behavior. It was effectively tragic. However, the epilogue ruins it. I could not believe that Roxane and Gen were married. Why not just have them visiting Simon and Edith in France? Was it just to have a happy-ish ending after their temporary Stockholm Syndrome lovers were killed? I found it eminently unbelievable.
In sum, this was an easy book to read but was often unbelievable, the epilogue spoiled a tragic ending, and I really wish she'd just owned up to this being set in Peru.
This book was annoying and a waste of a perfectly good sci-fi premise. The plot was a thriller with a murderous AI premise that was given away at the beginning, couched in a discovery that hints at the existence of a soul. The real problem was that the main character was a narcissistic self-obsessed douchebag, and that was a nasty combination with a narrative full of sexist tropes and cliches. I basically fell into a spiral of “I hate the main character and wish he would just go away” feelings throughout this book.
I'm sure the rest of this review is a spoiler, but this book is so old and tedious that I am not going to spare a spoiler tag. Seriously - any book where the premise is “guy can't get over himself and with a truly stupid idea causes multiple murders but that's okay because he's a Good Dude” is at best a snoozefest and at worst a fist-clenching nightmare for me. This book was both. I got really sick of how insecure Cathy, the Douchebag's wife, was portrayed, and how we could not for one second get out of Douchebag's head to escape from his self-aggrandizing pity party. I had to skip an entire chapter of completely unnecessary graphic violence that came out of nowhere as the narrative mutilated a dude in a horrifying way for nothing more than having sex with the Douchebag's wife. I found myself skimming most of the long soliloquys about the nature of being and thought and love. The premise of discovering a “soul wave” was interesting enough, and the asides about the impact on religion and law and thought were even more fascinating, and I wished this book had focused on that and the various stories around that discovery and how it impacted actual people's lives instead of focusing on Douchebag's, well, douchebaggery.
I can hardly believe that this book won a Nebula in 1995, but then I looked at the slate of other nominees, and... well, we all have bad years.
I lemmed this book about 50% of the way through. My Overdrive loan time ended and I was okay with that because it meant I didn't have to struggle through more of this book. Like many other reviewers, I found the plot disjointed and the time jumps distracting. I couldn't keep track of who the characters were or what they were doing. I found the concept of the book very interesting, but the fact that each chapter is a mini-vignette really did not make for a coherent story. I would really like to have this book be a narrative of the start of Everfair and the battle with King Leopold, instead of the tiny glimpses into the fighting that we got, and then suddenly a time jump to WWI without learning about the outcomes or the changes.
This book was fun. It reminded me a lot of Scalzi, a little of Douglas Adams. In this book, we follow the consciousness of a man who died in present time who had his brain frozen for future scientific research. That research turned out to be different than expected, and now this man - Bob - is the personality of an AI that is piloting a probe sent out to explore the universe. Go forth and multiply, he is basically told, and he does.
The first half of this book was the most fun. I enjoyed seeing Bob interact with the people training him and getting to know and understand himself as an AI. The second half was somewhat less fun as we got into the “multiplying Bobs” phase. I liked Bob in the beginning, but I got really really sick of Bob near the end. I wanted there to be someone else in the interactions, but every character seemed to be an iteration of him. Okay, so most of them were by that point, but some of the humans left on the destroyed Earth could have had a bit of a different personality. Maybe there could have been a female character that wasn't Bob's relative. Maybe the spry youth they encountered on the Delta planet could have been a female-type instead of a 'he'. I did get so very tired of all of the 'he' in this book. Finally, for all the discourse about “hand waving” in this book, there was an awful lot of hand waving. (Maybe this was intentional?)
Overall it was fun and I'd recommend reading it if you can turn your brain off and have a little bit of fun for a while.
I read this book because my stepdaughter was shocked that I had never read it and immediately went and fetched me her copy.
Now I know what a greaser is.
I know why I never read this book as a youth - it is not escapist at all, and I am drawn to escapist fiction. If I wasn't assigned it for school, I wouldn't have read it (and maybe I would have skimmed it even if I was assigned it). Maybe this book gives young people a sense of empowerment to be different and sensitive, even when the people around you are tough assholes. Maybe it can clue people in to actually paying attention to what their family and friends are going through. Maybe it can dissuade someone from thinking that violence is the answer to everything.
This book wasn't for me, but maybe it was for someone else.
