jayisreading's reviews
514 reviews

The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa

Go to review page

adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

2.75

I wouldn’t call myself an aficionado of the science fiction genre, but I have enough of a grasp that I have some expectations. Ashing-Giwa’s The Splinter in the Sky is a welcome standalone novel, in the sense that the genre is always in need of more marginalized voices, especially ones drawing attention to topics such as the consequences of colonialism (a prevalent theme in the genre yet rarely critiqued). That being said, I found that this commentary was far too heavy-handed, to the point that by the time I was a quarter into the novel (not even halfway), I found myself thinking, I get it, can we please get to something new now?

On another note, I always felt that standalone sci-fi novels are especially tricky to write, particularly because of the incredible care that must go into good worldbuilding. This is the author’s one chance to craft a convincing world that won’t be expanded any further, so the stakes are a bit high on this front. Unfortunately, I felt that there was a lot left to be desired in this novel. There were a number of ideas and elements introduced throughout that I found fascinating, but many of them came and went in a blink of an eye, leaving the reader very little time to actually appreciate the universe Ashing-Giwa created.

Relatedly, one would think this must mean the plot was especially interesting to make up for the worldbuilding. While there was political intrigue (and a bit complex, too), I didn’t think it came together as well as it could have, which was in part because of the worldbuilding that was somewhat hastily put together, it seems. The plot was fairly predictable, the characters and their relationships lacked complexity (and, in the protagonist’s case, flaws), and I felt there were one too many deus ex machina moments.

One positive thing I will say about The Splinter in the Sky is that it is a very approachable and straightforward science fiction novel. I know the genre can be daunting for some readers, but Ashing-Giwa’s writing style is an accessible one—even with its flaws—and it could make for a good jumping point into denser novels.

Ultimately, I think this novel could have afforded to have been longer (or even turned into a duology or something) to really flesh out the universe and characters. The pieces were there, but they didn’t come together as well as the author may have thought.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings
They Fell Like Stars from the Sky and Other Stories by Sheikha Helawy

Go to review page

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

3.75

This feminist collection features eighteen very short stories that explore how Palestinian Bedouin girls and women navigate societal expectations, especially when facing misogyny. Each story is a brief but powerful glimpse into their lives, with characters standing up for themselves through small acts of rebellion. In addition, many of these characters express a sense of desire and longing for freedom: something more for themselves and for the place they call home. Helawy quietly touches on the Israeli occupation of her homeland, which is inherently part of the experience of contemporary Palestinian Bedouin society, even if it’s not at the foreground. However, at the heart of this collection is to shine a light on the girls and women who share her identity, to uplift their stories, as so few have written about their experiences (including hers).

Regarding personal enjoyment, I admit I wasn’t especially attached to a lot of the stories in this collection, mainly due to how short they were, but there were absolutely a few that had me thinking. I’d be curious to read more of Helawy’s writings, though, should more be translated into English in the future.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings
woke up no light: poems by Leila Mottley

Go to review page

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

4.25

A bold poetry collection that focuses on being Black in the United States (particularly as a Black woman), Mottley weaves together a story of sorts through her poems that cover a wide range of themes including but not limited to misogynoir, sexuality, police brutality, as well as community. Divided into four sections (“girlhood,” “neighborhood,” “falsehood,” and “womanhood”), Mottley’s experiences as a young Black woman in Oakland, California (and, more broadly, the United States) shine in many of these poems with how earnest she is in each.

Something that struck me about these poems was the near-absence of abstract language in favor of delivering complex ideas concretely and without frills. This isn’t to say that the poems are simplistic, so much as it is to say that Mottley clearly illustrates these complex emotions and lived experiences in a way that I think can be appreciated by a wide audience in every sense of the word, as well as lead to meaningful conversations.

Note: Many thanks to the publisher for sending me a finished copy.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings
Good Monster by Diannely Antigua

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

4.25

There’s a particular candor in Antigua’s poems that make it feel as though you’re in an intimate conversation with her and not just reading what she has to say. Antigua lays bare the emotional and mental pain she suffered in this collection, ranging from sexual abuse as a child to religious trauma, while also sharing her disabled experiences with chronic pain and mental illness. There’s no question that this collection is heavy, but it’s a powerful one that reflects a resilience to continue to find love and life in spite of all the negatives.

I was especially taken to the “Diary Entry” poems, which were made up of collaged words from her actual diary entries over the decades. I also appreciated that there was a Spotify playlist for this collection. These particularly personal touches made these poems especially beautiful, even if many were heartbreaking.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings
Bad Seed: Stories by Gabriel Carle

Go to review page

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

3.5

In Carle’s short story collection, they give the reader a glimpse into queer life in Puerto Rico, exploring themes such as growing up and loneliness. I admit that I found some of these stories bleaker than expected (e.g., one story dove deep into the fear of testing positive for HIV), but other stories reflected the care and resilience that existed in queer communities (online and offline). These stories focused on queer young adults making sense of their lives, albeit in a relatively reckless fashion. Sex and drugs were prevalent across these stories, the undercurrents of their frequent appearances reflecting a desire and longing for something more.

For me, this collection was a bit of a mixed bag. There were a few memorable ones, but the others I didn’t care as much for. One thing is for certain, though, that these stories were unflinching, raw, and intimate.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings
Most Ardently: A Pride & Prejudice Remix by Gabe Cole Novoa

Go to review page

emotional hopeful fast-paced

4.0

Most Ardently is an interesting queer take on Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. I admit that I picked this one up without reading the synopsis, so I was only aware that it was Novoa’s own spin on a classic that happened to be queer. It was certainly a surprise to discover that Elizabeth Bennet in this retelling is actually Oliver Bennet, a trans teenage boy. This decision to have a trans protagonist made it that Novoa added another complex layer to the existing discussions about gender dynamics in the original novel. It was interesting to see how Novoa’s queering of Pride & Prejudice impacted the direction of the story, which was simultaneously familiar yet not, as a result of having to attend to what it meant to be queer during the Victorian era. I thought Novoa handled this pretty well without getting too caught up in the details to lose the plot. I did feel that Oliver’s thoughts were a bit repetitive once you’re further in the novel, but this might not bother everyone.

Also, a warning to trans readers: Considering the time period and the protagonist being trans, it shouldn’t come as a complete surprise that transphobia is rampant in this novel. There’s very frequent deadnaming and misgendering, which is critical in the development of the story.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk

Go to review page

challenging informative mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

4.25

Pamuk takes the reader back to sixteenth-century Istanbul to focus on miniaturists, particularly on the murder of one named Elegant Effendi. While, in essence, the novel is concerned with uncovering who the murderer is, there are a lot of other threads—most, if not all, related to the murder at hand—in this novel that made it far more complex than I expected. There are numerous characters narrating this expansive and complex story, and the reader must piece together these characters’ limited perspectives to figure out who the murderer might be. In addition to this whodunit story, Pamuk writes a sweeping love story between two characters, Black and Shekure. He also draws significant attention to art of this region and time period and its reception. The anxiety around art and religion (and, relatedly, East and West) was particularly interesting to read, especially with how it related to the murder.

I will say that considering the sheer number of moving parts in this novel, it’s very likely that a lot of readers—including myself—will miss a fair amount of details, especially if they’re unfamiliar with the culture and history of this region and time period. I think what made this novel particularly challenging was the literary and philosophical components that were woven in that I was not at all familiar with. Upon further research, though, I discovered how central they were to Pamuk’s crafting of this novel. In addition to multiple moving parts, Pamuk took a very unique approach to structuring his novel, ranging from the many characters narrating the story, stylistic choices in how the story is told, to breaking the fourth wall on a number of occasions to incorporate the reader into the novel. This is all to say that each chapter gives a lot for the reader to puzzle over.

Even if I didn’t fully grasp everything that was happening, I can at least appreciate the incredible time and thought that clearly went into this novel. I was also really taken to Göknar’s beautiful translation, and I can only imagine how much more enchanting it is in the original Turkish. I think this book will work for some readers, even if they don’t have a full grasp of everything, but I can also see how many others will find the prose and structure unwieldy.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison

Go to review page

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

In less than one hundred pages, Toni Morrison presented a sharp exploration of race in American literature, specifically the “Africanist presence” in these novels. I am oversimplifying the nuances of her argument here, but, in essence, Morrison argued that the construct of whiteness depended on and responded to the imagining of Blackness. Furthermore, in a society as racialized as the one in the United States, Morrison argued that it would be practically impossible to avoid the influences of race in this nation’s literature, whether one is cognizant of these influences or not. I think the following quote does a great job encapsulating what she was getting at:

The world does not become raceless or will not become unracialized by assertion. The act of enforcing racelessness in literary discourse is itself a racial act. Pouring rhetorical acid on the fingers of a black hand may indeed destroy the prints, but not the hand. Besides, what happens in that violent, self-serving act of erasure to the hands, the fingers, the fingerprints of the one who does the pouring? Do they remain acid-free? The literature itself suggests otherwise.

Morrison supplemented her insightful critiques with close readings of various novels, many of them being from the so-called American literary canon. She reframed these white works through a Black lens to demonstrate how Black people (and, more broadly, nonwhite people) have been poorly characterized or, more frequently, entirely shut out from these stories, in spite of the undercurrents of race being ever-present.

Much of Morrison’s explorations complemented academic discourses happening around power dynamics and the construct of the “Other” (i.e., poststructuralism) at the time of this book’s publication, and it certainly helps to have some familiarity with these theoretical framings to further understand the points she wanted to make. Considering this, it wouldn’t surprise me if some people find this book denser than they’d like, but I find that her writing is far more approachable than the theorists who explored similar themes. This is all to say that I really do think it’s worth picking this book up, even if it is a challenge. I do think reading Playing in the Dark some thirty years later makes some of Morrison’s ideas seem “obvious,” but I think there’s still a lot to get out of her thinking and can serve as a good reminder to critically engage with American literature with her points in mind.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings
The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo

Go to review page

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

4.0

I admit that The Brides of High Hill isn’t my favorite from The Singing Hills Cycle, but I do commend Vo for switching things up by adding a Gothic horror atmosphere to the novella. Furthermore, it’s no longer just Chih telling/collecting stories; they’re actually in the story themself now (though we got a sense of that in the previous novella). As always, Vo brings sharp and beautiful prose to this novella, so there isn’t anything in particular to critique on that front. I think the reason I didn’t feel nearly as invested in this latest installment is perhaps a result of wanting a change of pace in the series in general. You could argue that this book is a change of pace, and I can’t help but wonder if Vo is switching gears, based on the subtle changes in storytelling style in the latest two installments. I guess time will tell, depending on when the next book comes out, which I will still happily read.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings
My Tender Matador by Pedro Lemebel

Go to review page

emotional reflective medium-paced

4.0

I won’t lie, I struggled a bit through this one. I think a large part of it was because of how the novel was formatted digitally that I had some trouble following what was happening. It also didn’t help that there were no clear breaks given that I never really knew where would be a good place to pause (and this may not have been an issue in a physical copy).

Putting aside the above issues, though, I found it interesting that Lemebel told two rather contrasting stories in one novel. The first being from the perspective of the Queen of the Corner, who falls in love with a younger man, Carlos, as well as her reminiscences of cruising and finding herself. The second narrative is from Augusto Pinochet, the military dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990, primarily going on about his day-to-day life (all the while expressing annoyance with his wife). The stories don’t quite intertwine in the way one would expect, but we see how two very different individuals grapple with the forces of politics shaping their personal lives. One is… well… a dictator doing a lot of that shaping; the other very much wishes to not deal with politics but is caught in its web anyway, in part because of her relationship with Carlos. However, we see in the Queen’s narrative that politics is inevitably going to interfere in everyone’s lives, especially for those who are marginalized. Furthermore, Lemebel presents a poignant examination of masculinity and patriarchy through his two protagonists.

Something else that I found interesting was how the Queen’s gender identity was approached. I’m not sure how Lemebel had this presented in the original Spanish, but I thought it was interesting that the Queen very much perceives herself as a woman and uses she/her pronouns, yet others around her saw and treated her as a gay man and used he/him pronouns. One would think the Queen is being misgendered here, except that she seemed relatively unbothered by this. I do think there’s something being said here about the fluidity of gender, but I also would be curious to know if this was also the case in the original text.

Overall, this was a poignant read. I’d like to revisit this novel (this time, reading a physical copy) and see if I can pick up any details I most likely missed (especially considering my limited knowledge of Chilean history). Fair warning to anyone interested in picking this novel up, homophobia—particularly the use of slurs—is rampant in this one.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings