James
Pretty bad.
1. This is about 25 pages of story and 330 pages of backstory. I miss when authors saved all of their character backstory for their notes, and just focused on telling us....ya know....a story. I'll need to read some Le Guin to remind me what real writing is like.
2. The characters are not particularly interesting or worth investing time in. Rafi's language as a black man is played up so much, even though Powers tries to lampshade it as a performance for Keene. Evie's queerness is given one sentence and abandoned. The diversity of characters feels so cynical, calculated for Twitter and Booktok readers rather than a truly empathetic portrayal of human beings.
3. Related, Keene in particular seems so unreal as a tech billionaire. He just spends decades as a hermit in his house leading his pay-to-play Facebook knock-off, and somehow ends up the richest guy on the planet? There is so little attention paid to the actual social complexity (and dangers) of the billionaire class that it often felt irresponsible. There is also little depth here. Keene acts as he acts his whole life because one not very good friend got mad at him once and cut off their already toxic relationship. It's facile.
4. The ending twist is muddled, and makes it hard to know what's the point to all of this. Is it a critique? A misfired satire? A celebration of the singularity that betrays all of the adoring of the ocean that's gone before ? It certainly drives home the way the Makateans are simply props in the service of a white man's narrative. But I don't think Powers was being that self-reflective.
Anyway, big yikes to this one.
Mann is a great prose writer, and his millennial observations on fatherhood are often relatable. He also hits on a great critical thought sometimes, like how Sally Rooney writes in this weird tension between uncool and profound.
The essays are often way too long, though. And there's a self-indulgence that's self-aware (performances is right in the subtitle), but self-aware in a Bo Burnham kind of way that's eternally recursive. Burnham gets away with it more than Mann, probably because of his funny songs. In the case of long form essays, it makes one long to tell him to wrap it up.
A very good mashup of a fairy and detective story, and one that breaks out of the British setting of your Jonathan Stranges/Emily Wildes, etc. I do think it spins its wheels a bit in the second half, as we get repeated reminders of the pain in Bao's chest and that Snow just doesn't trust Shiro, rather than development of plot or characters. But this is still a fun read, with enjoyable characters and good atmosphere.
- The parts with Big Ammachi are good. Worth all the stars I gave. Unfortunately, it's not enough to balance the rest of this tome.
2. Digby is the worst. Phillipose is almost the worst. Don't care about Elsie. Hated every part and character that was not Big Ammachi, or in the first part of the book. The granddaughter was ok, but kind of tacked on at the end and her story was not nearly as compelling as what we started with.
3. Oh, so we're still doing the whole “dude falls in love with a 9 year old and meets her again as an adult so he can finally hook up with her” trope? Gross. Not something we need to carry on from the Thorn Birds, authors.
4. Some of the deaths are so cruel they're more appropriate for a Stephen King rip-off than a so-called literary work. I bet it's a melodrama so people will tragically die, but it's so over the top that it's just mean spirited, almost parodic.
I really like Millet's novels Dinosaurs and The Children's Bible. Unfortunately, this foray into non-fiction was way too scattered to work for me. Bits were interesting and well written, but nothing was allowed to breathe or develop. It's also self-indulgent at times, like when Millet just starts listing her exes, who all have different (often glamorous) careers and she met in different countries? It was a very weird non-sequitur.
Really great, and complex, collection of stories. One was especially hopeful and moving, many others were bleak and brutal. Some were little character studies, another was a full-blown murder mystery.
There's also a really interesting running theme of which women are protected by society (especially men), and which ones aren't. Some receive comfort, justice, vengeance....and some are rejected or forgotten.
Easily the best book I've read this year, and I'm not sure it will be topped.
A worthy spiritual successor of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Cozy, adventurous, smart, disciplined in what it reveals and what it doesn't, and honest with its characters. Morally complicated without being edgy or muddy, with themes that touch on growing up, disenchantment, environmental stewardship, adoption, classism, gender dynamics, and probably more, but without ever getting overly didactic about any of them.
Quite poor.
About 200-300 pages too long. Unbearably repetitive. I just started skipping the parts where Dain scolded her yet again, or where she felt Xadan so fuckinghotwaitihatehim. Also everyone keeps saying Violet is brilliant but it takes ages, and something happening three times, for her to actually clue into what's going on. That's more a symptom of the author not respecting her reader, but it undermined the character too. Side characters showed promise but went no where.
World building was neat at first, but there's not a lot there. The school is very simplistic. Every magic power the main characters get is introduced with “omg that power hasn't been seen in a century!!” Which ones are common then?
The best scenes were lifted from other, better YA. The threshing is a quick Hunger Games riff. The map heist could be straight out of Harry Potter.
And the dragons are neat. Too bad they're also sidelined for more painfully written thirst scenes.
Enjoyed the gothic tone, haunted house mystery, and shades of other works from Howl's Moving Castle to Piranesi to Greek myth to the Brontes.
I got frustrated with Opal, the main character, though, who really needed to develop more by page 150. She is a chronic liar who gets mad when anyone else lies to her (which everyone does a lot). She acknowledges that she's a liar, thief, and cheat, but never her constant hypocrisy. And, as you may have inferred by now, this is also one of those plots that relies too much on people not talking to each other, and every writer needs to get over that very tired device.
Lots of problems with this one
-It's like someone wanted to one-up The Martian, but went so over the top that it's just silly.
-The prose is really terrible sometimes. The first page alone has a car shedding scabs, and “grovelling” along the “cinnamon shoulder” of a highway. Meanwhile a cloud “parachutes” over the road. What is this?
-But worst of all, it's a story about how the blame for parental abuse is shared 50/50 between son and father. Sure, Mitt was an emotionally and verbally abusive father, but he didn't get the son he wanted, so how can you blame him? The book really tries to both-sides their relationship as it reaches for a reconciliation arc. It's gross stuff.
“I cannot unlearn the habit of thinking about sin. It was wrong—it was a sin and it is a sin when human beings and their inherent dignity are simply...disregarded.”
“If I were a god, the spinner of myths and the holder of lightning bolts, I'd banish all of it. And then I'd bring back every good person driven out of this industry by evil shit.”
i read it because this book seemed relevant
A book in which there are a select few special people who are geniuses at everything, their semi-special friends who are only special because they recognize the really special ones, and then everyone else is a contemptuous normie who probably believes in God (ew!) and actually just needs to just get in line behind the real specials.
A truly bad novel, though Ayn Rand probably would've been a fan.
