heresthepencil's reviews
975 reviews

rep: Korean & Japanese cast, gay side character
tw: racism, bigotry, misogyny, physical assault, suicide, AIDS, cancer, death, gambling, abortion, underaged sex


the mcdonald’s of family sagas. a family saga for people who've never read a good one. with its plain writing devoid of any beauty & paper characters with no personality, it feels like reading a history textbook. where are the emotions? why should i care about anyone who died here?

there’s no subtlety. instead of properly developing characters, the author just has them spell out exactly what they think and how they feel (in unnatural dialogues, too, often full of exposition the author didn’t know how to feed us any other way). they're all flat and one-dimentional (if that!), and after describing their motives, they act 100% in accordance to them. it doesn't help that the book is written with an omniscient narrator, giving you random, unnecessary insight into minor characters who disappear a few pages later. and nothing that happens is ever surprising anyway.

and oh, the random dropping of korean and japanese words & phrases, but only ever ones that could be familiar to an american reader! so you want them to feel like they’re reading something exotic, but not so foreign they’re lost? it’s literally bits you can pick up from watching kdramas and anime… 

rep: Lebanese-Syrian trans lesbian mc, Haitian lesbian li, trans side character, Lebanese gay side character, Palestinian gay side character, Syrian side characters
tw: transphobia, torture, implied rape, violence

gorgeous in its execution, haunting in its tales. the writing style is beautiful; the vignettes-chapters allow for a broader scope to the story, for all the time jumps & little scenes we need to see the bigger picture, but they still manage to portray all the humanity & emotions, all the little details as well.

it's as much a story of refugees, as it is of people searching for their home & for what makes them who they are. searching for their breaking points. it's kaleidoscope of a story, endless micro-cosmoses seen up close. 

 rep: Hindu mc, Hindu characters, Parsi mc, Parsi characters
tw: caste system, rape, domestic violence, physical abuse, verbal abuse, gaslighting, AIDS, death, abortion, misogyny, infidelity, alcoholism


every bad thing that happened, happened because of men, because of their actions & inactions. yes, it’s a discussion on power & status & wealth, but it’s still all told through suffering of women at the hands of men. and it’s such an onslaught of suffering…

rather heavy-handed at times; no space for subtlety & the reader making conclusions for themself. the ending isn’t unexpected in the least, but still feels rushed. 

<b>rep:</b> mc with depression, bi mc with PTSD, gay side character with epilepsy
<b>tw:</b> murder, blood, war violence

the words 'look at the big picture' has never been more true, than when reading a sanderson book. his ability to spin everything on its head is uncanny.

the amount of pov characters allows him to show those characters even better. which is to say, two of them often go through a similar ordeal at the same time but react in vastly different ways. and it's those differences that let us learn more about the characters. great writing skill!


spoilers for me, don't look:

dalinar and navani get married
kal comes back home
elhokar swears faith to dalinar 
amaram is made highprince sadeas
shallan learns kal killed her brother
shallan sends away the unmade in urithiru 
dalinar send visions to other monarchs 
kaladin, shallan, adolin and elokhtar go to kholinar 
moash kills elhokar 
the guys land in shardsmar 
dalinar gets venli into one of the visions 
turns out humans are the invaders - no one trusts dalinar anymore 
renarin is bonded to a corrupted spren 
amaram’s men felt the thrill sent by odium and attacked thaylen city 
szeth swears an ideal to dalinar 
odium makes dalinar his champion 
dalinar becomes unity
adolin brings the spren of his shardblade back to life?
teft and lopen become radiant 
they make jasnah the queen of alethkar
shallan and adolin get married
taravangian meets odium

rep: Palestinian mc & characters
tw: gang rape (off-page), murder, bombings

the way that small details in writing (turns of phrase, descriptions) connect the past & the present. the way our palestinian narrator in the present describes the violence of occupation as every-day & normal, and the jewish narrator from the past doesn't even bother to name the presence of military as violence. 

"Again, he thought he must be asleep. He looked in the mirror once more and said: ‘That’s me.’ He listened to the latest news report. No new killings anywhere. He was delighted by this peculiar morning. His delight led him to the writing desk, with one line in his head: ‘I’m alive even though I feel no pain.’ He was filled with a passionate desire to make poetry, because of a crystal clarity that had descended upon him from some distant place: from the place where he was now! When he sat at the writing desk he found the line ‘I’m alive even though I feel no pain,’ written on a blank sheet of paper. This time he didn’t just think he was asleep. He was sure of it."

 rep: Puerto Rican American gay mc, Puerto Rican American characters
tw: child abuse, mentions of pornography & pedophilia

raw and angry, and tender. 

 to the person who recommended me this book (i mean, charlotte), sincerely, from the bottom of my heart: fuck. you.


rep: Chinese American gay mc, Taiwanese American achillean li, Taiwanese & Chinese American side characters, side character with depression
tw: past suicide, past child abduction