#petty tamlin my beloved

[redgoldsparks]

May Reading and Reviews by Maia Kobabe

I post my reviews throughout the month on Storygraph and Goodreads, and do roundups here and on patreon.

Boys Run The Riot vol 2 by Keito Gaku

I really wanted to like this series, but unfortunately, I don't. The pacing feels rushed, the characters aren't very realistic and burst out into outsized emotional reactions that don't feel earned, and at the end of this volume the trans character is outed against his will on a youtube channel with a million followers. I'm going to have to give up on this story. 

Unmasking Autism by Devon Price

This book is short, accessible and very informative! Price is trans and autistic, and was only diagnosed later in life. He blends narrative of his own lived experience with many interviews and thorough research. This book encourages compassion, self-knowledge, community building, and unmasking- the process of shedding the habits many autistic people employ to hide or mask their autistic traits. As a queer person pondering my own potential place on the autism spectrum, this book was an excellent introduction and gave me a lot of food for thought!

Thick as Thieves by Megan Whelan Turner read by Steve West

These books continue to delight! This deep into the series, I don't want to summarize the plot, as one of the pleasures of this series is how each book has built on the previous ones. The volatile political machinations between the the three peninsula countries of Eddis, Attolia, Sounis and the Mede Empire grow increasingly complex. Eugenides continues to make moves that appear petty and childish, whose deeper purpose is only revealed much later. I continue to be amazed at the character arcs, both of new characters and returning favorites. Read these books! I can't recommend them highly enough!

White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link

Another magical short story collection from Kelly Link! These stories are more directly inspired by existing fairy tales than Link's other work, but each one has been moved into the modern day, and generally changed so much as to be only loosely recognizable. A Game of Smash and Recovery, inspired by Hansel and Gretel, does feature a brother and sister; but they have been stranded on a foreign moon by their space-traveling parents, and live by scavenging supplies from vast warehouses left behind by previous inhabitants, while evading the vampires which flutter around the edges of their downed spacecraft. As the younger sister gets older, she comes closer and closer to a realization that neither she nor her brother nor their parents are who she thinks they are. The Lady and the Fox, based on Tamlin, does involve a young woman clutching her beloved to her chest through a series of painful magical transformations, but the woman is a charity case goddaughter of a rich actress who's family hosts ridiculously elaborate Christmas parties in their family mansion. Skinder's Veil, loosely Snow-White and Rose Red, does contain two nearly identical sisters, but the main character is a grad student struggling to finish his thesis who takes on a house-sitting job in a cabin in Vermont that might be visited by immortals. And so on and so on, Link weaves her threads. This one didn't unseat Get in Trouble as my favorite Link collection, but I enjoyed it very much. 

Return of The Thief by Megan Whelan Turner read by Steve West

Once again, Turner introduces a new POV character, and once again she knocks a complicated, emotional, satisfying tale of historical fantasy out of the park! I can't get over the fact that this six book series book the author over 20 years to write, and yet is so internally consistent, it feels as if she knew from the very beginning exactly how to she wanted everything to go. This series is technically YA, but the majority of the characters are adults; it was started in the era before YA existed as the genre we know it now. If you are a fan of any Tamora Pierce books, or Steven Brust's Jhereg series, or Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor, I think you'd like these too. 

Different for Boys by Patrick Ness illustrated by Tea Bendix

This illustrated book tells an impressively nuanced story in a very short space. The narrator, Ant, ponders the meaning of virginity as a high school boy questioning his own sexuality. Ant and his best friend from childhood, Charlie, regularly mess around with each other, performing sexual acts which are blacked out in the text. The characters themselves are aware of this textual censorship and comment on it, adding a level of meta to this already nonlinear and nontraditional narrative. Charlie is sweet in private but vocally homophobic in school, hurling insults at another mutual friend, Jack, who isn't publicly out but is read as queer by his peers. Ant struggles with how much, or when, to step in and defend Jack without outing his and Charlie's secret relationship. The story has an open but hopeful ending, and its questions and unresolved aspects feel deeply true. 

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

Told entirely in slack messages, this nontraditional novel unfolds the minor and major dramas of a public relations firm with a speculative twist. The main character, Gerald, has accidentally uploaded his consciousness into the slack app and is unsure what is happening to the body he left behind. The slackbot is becoming increasingly sentient as he sends it help query after help query. His co-workers think this is an elaborate ruse to take advantage of their company's lax work from home policies during a particularly snowy New York winter. Meanwhile, his coworker Lydia is being haunted by spectral howling, Tripp is regularly the only man in the on-site office and keeps leaving the heating on overnight, Deepu is feeling left out of office in jokes and Doug, their boss, is convinced that someone is sabotaging his office furniture. This story is snappy, queer, and never gets bogged down by what could have been a gimmicky premise. It took me one Saturday afternoon to read! 

The Thief by Megan Whelan Turner read by Steve West

After finishing this whole 6 book series I went back to re-read book one and it is DELICIOUS to catch all of the hints and foreshadowing once you know how the story ends. Here’s the review I wrote after my first read in 2018:

This book was DELIGHTFUL. Set in a fantasy Mediterranean Renaissance world, the prose is simple and the initial plot set up is uncomplicated. Gen is a master level thief who made a mistake and ended up in the King's prison in Sounis. After months of imprisonment he is summoned by the Magnus, the King's most trusted adviser, who threatens Gen into joining a covert mission. A small party (the magus, the thief, one soldier and two of the magus' students) will sneak into the neighboring country of Attolia, in search of a powerful and ancient artifact. But every member of the party is intentionally or unintentionally carrying secrets, and in the end few of them are who they appear to be. I already feel like I've said too much. Go and read this book to find out the rest!

Hungry Ghost by Victoria Ying

I'm refraining from giving this book a star rating because I feel genuinely unqualified to rate its effectiveness. This story deals with two very heavy topics- a character struggling with an eating disorder and grief after the death of a parent- which I have no experience with. The book portrays the main character binging and purging, which could potentially be very triggering for some readers in ED recovery, but could also be extremely cathartic to those who haven't seen their experiences reflected before. That's really going to depend on the reader. What I can say is that the art is very beautiful, I enjoyed the limited color palette, and I hope this book finds the readers who need it.

Freestyle by Gale Galligan

Eighth grader Cory is part of a tight friend group of dancers who practice every weekend. It's their last year of middle school and they want to make the most of this year- and hopefully win the annual winter Bronx Dance Battle! Unfortunately, Cory's parents aren't thrilled with his grades, and they hire a tutor three afternoons a week after school, cutting into his free time with his friend crew. Worse yet, his tutor turns out to be the best student in his grade, a girl named Sunna who he immediately clashes with. But then Cory realizes that Sunna also as a secret talent: she can throw a yo-yo like no one he's ever seen. The art in this book is fantastic, colorful and energetic, with beautiful panels capturing the movement of dance, running, yo-yo tricks, and physical humor. I had to set aside a little bit of disbelief that any eighth graders might be this motivated and organized; I've also seen a couple minor critics of the way Sunna, a hijab wearing Muslim character, was portrayed as attending a school dance and spending time tutoring Cory in his bedroom with the door closed. However, the overall tone of this book is so joyful, positive, warmhearted, and well-intentioned that I'd still absolutely recommend it. 

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

I am not a very active reader of poetry, but this collection contains one of the poems I think about possibly more than any other: "We Lived Happily during the War." I first read it in the New Yorker magazine sometime before 2017, though I don't remember exactly when. I saw the poem circulating the internet again when Russian began to invade Ukraine. Kaminsky was born in the former Soviet Union, and the majority of the poems in this collection unfold a story of an Eastern European town occupied by enemy soldiers. Reoccurring characters tell of the violence and tragedy of this occupation: a newly married couple expecting a child, the owner of a puppetry theater, a young deaf child killed by soldiers, neighbors who defend and betray each other. Read it almost like a poetic play in two acts, relevant to our times. 

#book reviews #comic book reviews #reading #audiobooks

[basaltdriver]

(SPOILER ALERT): ACOWAR and how more of everything is not necessarily better

A Court of Wings and Ruin was so much, and yet not enough.

Parts of it were really good. I liked Feyre’s antics in the Spring Court, and how she had agency and control, how she orchestrated everything and played everyone against one another. But once she left Spring it seemed that all disintegrated. And I had a problem with how Feyre never truly faced or cared about the consequences of her actions at that court. 

She allowed herself to become beloved--holy, adored by the Spring Court’s people and warriors. And then she just left them all behind without half a thought, to be slaughtered by Hybern, all to spite Tamlin. This was not the same Feyre that gave her jewelry to a water wraith during the Tithe in ACOMAF. It was so out-of-character for someone as humane as Feyre to turn her back on all of those fae and let them die at Hybern’s hands. Especially when later on in ACOWAR, she risks hers, Elain’s, and Azriel’s lives to get some random human Child of the Blessed out of the Hybern war camp. Especially when they fight a whole damn war about it.

Half-baked character development and inconsistency were the main problems I had with the book. The other thing was the menagerie of new characters that were flashed by us so quickly, I can hardly discern one personality from the next. I liked Helion-- I found Rhys might have modeled a lot of his personality off of the High Lord of Day-- but the other High Lords were forgettable and didn’t contribute much to the plot besides more bodies. There was the Autumn Court boys-- and who the hell is Eris? What did SJM want from this character when she wrote him? If he was an abuser, if he allowed such terrible things to be done to Mor, how dare she now try to write him as a potentially sympathetic character? Eris gave Mor some bullshit about her not understanding the circumstances around which she was brutalized... Just, screw that. I refuse.

I did like Jurian more than I was expecting to, though-- he was an interesting character. Drakon and Miryam and Nepherelle (is that how it’s spelled) seemed cool but uncompelling, and we hardly got to see more than their faces. Really, this book needed to be pared down a LOT. It was such a large-scale plot that it could never have been adequately contained in one novel (hence the spinoffs). Yet, with almost everything, there was little to no closure. You did not come away from it remotely satisfied.

Also SJM really did a number on her characters. Allow me to elaborate on a few of our faves:

Lucien: He’s given more depth here. I actually like what SJM did with him here by letting his character flesh out more, except having him ghost out for 85% of the novel just to conveniently return at the very end, and to also give us no resolution about him and Elain, was just a jerk move. Also, why did no one tell Lucien “Firedick” Vanserre who his real father is? Why was this MAJOR LIFE-CHANGING PLOT TWIST just casually floated and then never mentioned again? Who the hell does that???

Tamlin: Also, relegated to play the cliched role of “bitter abusive ex-boyfriend” up until the very end where he is suddenly given all sorts of character development that was, quite frankly, completely uninspired. We’re supposed to believe he was spying on Hybern this whole time???? And then just be chill with the absolute lack of closure between him and Feyre, with the fact that throughout this entire novel he and Feyre don’t have a single decent, honest conversation? Nope. Just, no.

Rhysand: I will always love Rhysand. But he was not the same cunning, driven High Lord that orchestrated Amarantha’s downfall and helped Feyre crawl out of her darkest days. No, now he was... petty. Weak. He never confronted or challenged Feyre on her mistakes or bad decisions, never pushed her to be better the way he did in ACOTAR and ACOMAF. Feyre didn’t really ever push back against him when he made completely avoidable mistakes, like when he hurt Mor by bringing in Eris. It’s not like I don’t like that they are gentle with each other and cherish one another-- I love that about them-- but there was nothing between him and Feyre but a lot of blind validation, which is not healthy. They acted like they were both scared to anger the other one which is, like I said, not healthy. 

Every instance where Feyre was given control or power seemed tokenized (like that time she sat on the throne in the Court of Nightmares-- pretty and bold, but without depth.) And speaking of tokens, lets go to my next character:

Mor: Goddamn it. Just, damn it. Mor deserved better than this. We all wanted more representation from SJM, okay-- not at the cost of the story’s integrity, but more naturally incorporated representation-- but this is not what ANY OF US meant. Mor deserved better than to become the Token Gay with no other purpose but to be sad and gay and sad about it. It was so random, and such a limp excuse for what was going on between her and Azriel (really? she dragged her heels for 500 years because she didn’t want to admit her feelings or upset Az’s fantasy about them being a happily-ever-after story? really????) The brave, strong, fearlessly honest Mor we got to know in ACOMAF is missing here. And it is a damned shame, because I loved her so much.

Nesta: I will be honest here; I was never a Nesta fan. She was just too cold and sharp and unnecessarily mean. As an older sibling myself, I could never quite reconcile her decision to put her youngest sibling in harm’s way just to spite her father, when any other person would go out of their way to protect their siblings. Her protectiveness for Elain I always found laughable when she wouldn’t even get off her ass to help them when they were mortal and destitute-- no, she let her baby sister risk her life for them all instead. Such an unflattering contrast to Cassian’s unswerving loyalty. I found her fickle and bitchy, and I didn’t think she deserved Cassian at all. Yet, in ACOWAR, she did earn some respect from manning up and finally taking on some damn responsibility rather than just being a whiny, bitchy nuisance that nobody wanted to deal with. I also enjoyed her camaraderie with Amren. 

Elain: Deserves all of the happiness in the world. Just let her plant the world into a giant garden, damn it!

Azriel: Also deserves all the happiness in the world. I would be perfectly fine with it if Elain bunked the mating bond with Lucien and she and Az wound up together instead. I think they make a good, well-matched pair, especially with how Az is so fond of her (he gave her Truth-Teller! The blade he’s never given anyone!!!). Also, for the love of all that is sacred, just let my poor Shadowsinger get over Mor already. Please.

Cassian: Deserves to have whatever he wants, whenever. Honestly, give my Illyrian baby everything the world has to offer. I never want to see him hurt again. He was injured far to many times in this book. My heart broke for him.

Tarquin: Needed to be in this book as much as Tamlin needed to be out of it. Really, he got, like, four pages of direct interaction. That’s it.

Okay, I have more (I have SO MUCH MORE) but this was long enough for now. I’ll leave you to read and stew.

#acowar #a court of thorns and roses #a court of mist and fury #a court of wings and ruin #sjm #sarah j maas #sjmaas