ohmage_resistance's reviews
71 reviews

This is a collection of fairytale inspired aromantic stories. Some of these stories were rereads for me, a few of them were new. Overall, I like the way KA Cook covers aro themes, but I think I prefer collections centered around common aro experiences (ie non partnering aros, aro allos, etc) rather than ones centered around a common setting from this author. I generally liked this though. I also like Cook's take on Witches as being very queer and not really fitting into society, and I think ze strikes a good balance between characters who find leaving an oppressive society behind empowering vs acknowledging the reason why they had to leave was because of oppression (which doesn't go away), so it didn't feel just like cheap empowerment wish fulfillment that sometimes these sorts of stories come across as to me.

So I didn't really have the best time with this book for a couple of reasons. Number one is that it's been a while since I read book one, so I had a bit of trouble remembering character names and roles. Number two is that this book did some very experimental stuff with timelines and surrealist mind trips and stuff like that. If book one was more like Perdido Street Station, this one was more like Archive Undying. I think I'm getting to the point where I'm realizing that books that are experimental for experimental's sake don't really work for me. Experimental because it works with the themes really well, I enjoy that (shoutout to The Spear Cuts Through Water), but books that are hard to follow just because, yeah, at a certain point the work to reward ration just isn't there (I should clarify that there are some themes here about colonization and oppression, they just aren't really meaningfully benefited by the way the book is written). There was even a nuclear reactor and I couldn't even tell what was going on with that (to the point where it was unclear whether it was a fusion or fission reactor (fission makes a lot more sense (because fusion reactors don't work like that), but they would occasionally talk about it like a fusion reactor plus that makes more sense for the title, IDK, and sometimes it was treated more like a bomb instead)), and I know more about nuclear reactors than your average person. Number three is that the audiobook is the wrong choice for this one. I find keeping track of characters and timelines harder in audiobooks, so I think if I were to try this book again, I would definitely try to read it with my eyes. But I honestly would recommend this for anyone, if only so that you can avoid listening to the narrator say "Then she drowned" at least a hundred times (another experimental writing choice that didn't really work.) Overall, I thought about maybe retrying this one with an ebook, but honestly, I don't think I enjoyed it enough to put in even more work to better understand the plot. Book 1 was still kind of trippy but to a way lower extent and was much better.

This book wasn't bad, but I didn't love it. Which makes sense, because I feel like I'm just too young, too American, and too uninterested in classics to really be the target audience for this book. I haven't read Jane Eyre, and I also tend not to be the biggest fan of books that get meta about people's love of reading. I'm also pretty uninvested in the concept of (romantic) Happily Ever Afters, so the romance subplot didn't really work for me (nor did the

Jane Eyre plot

). Also, this isn't the fault of the book, but the focus on the Crimean War just reminded me of the current war in Ukraine. So the MC was like "we need to end this war and let Russia take the region over" and I was like, ok, so that makes sense historically for the Crimean War context but also like, that's not really a message I want to hear in the context of the current war in Ukraine. 

IDK, I'm complaining a lot, but it wasn't a bad book, and I had an ok time with it. I don't think I'll continue with the series for the reasons I listed above (the "I'm too young, too American, and too uninterested in classics to really be the target audience for this book" part). 

Yeah, this book didn't quite work for me. The beginning was better, but once the two main plotlines started, I wasn't super interested in either. Faron had this really annoying plotline of "should I trust this obviously super sketchy figure that everyone tells me not to trust. I probably shouldn't. He's such a bad boy though and I have literally nothing else to do, so I think I'm going to trust him."

Surprise, he's evil and she shouldn't have trusted him. Who could have seen that coming? But of course it needs to be written that way, because the author needs to create conflict somehow for the next book, and that can't happen organically.

Anyway, I never like those sorts of plotlines. I was also a little weird because I think they kind of depend on the MC being attracted to the bad boy that they shouldn't trust, but this book like kinda half reads as a love triangle with Faron, the bad boy, and Reeve (Faron's actual love interest) but half doesn't because Faron is demi so there's no reason why she should be attracted to the bad boy love interest.

Again, doesn't really make sense to me, but probably works as a setup for book 2

. Elara's plotline is going to fantasy!English dragon school. I feel like this was speed through so fast that a lot of it lost impact and was poorly defined. Honestly, if you want a book that slows down and actually explores the concept of a girl going to a dragon riding school run by her colonizers, just read To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose. The commentary on racism, colonization and empire is also way better thought out there. Where in this book, you have things like apparently people standing over Elara's bed with a knife being casually mentioned as a racist threat she faced, her getting into a contest to defeat a racist bully who called her a slur (which I get it is bad, but it's not threatening her life), to half of her classmates and teachers, almost none of which she has an actual on page relationship with, caring enough about her to go to

war on her behalf against their own country

. There is absolutely no connecting tissue between any of that. A lot of the commentary on racism and colonization is just "something that bad people do" and not really critically looking at how they form systems of oppression, which is why this book's take on it feels very like simplified fiction rather than realistic or grounded commentary.

This book didn't land for me. There's kind of commentary on three different things here: extremist/high demand religious groups, the rise of fascism/political extremism, and an abusive mentor-mentee relationship. But really, it was mostly just looking at cults/high demand religious groups and the rise of fascism/political extremism through the lens of an abusive mentor-mentee relationship—which didn't work for me because those are different types of dynamics. There's similarities for sure, but there's also some important differences that Mills just ignores, which made the book's themes feel much, much weaker for me.

The biggest and most obvious difference is that an abusive mentor-mentee relationship is a one on one relationship, where cults and fascism are both social movements. Yes, they might have leaders, but they involve a lot more people in general, so the dynamics are different. Those leaders don't individually go to every follower and have toxic interpersonal relationships with them, they play people off of each other. They normalize extreme behavior/worldviews because everyone else is doing it. If I understand them correctly, cults prey on people’s desire for community/to belong, and the extreme lengths people will go to get that community. Yes, sometimes people can be ostracized/cut off from community in a cult, but that only works as a punishment because that sense of community is so strong that people are willing to do anything to “earn” their way back into it, otherwise it doesn't work. I’m mostly focusing on cult stuff here, but this is also how facsism/political extremism works—it’s social, it reinforces an in-group worldview (and cuts people off from outside worldviews, which are seen as threats), it relies on people forming a group identity not just by having a relationship with a strongman leader, but with each other as well. Even if we take the example of the far right in the US, it doesn't work just because of Trump, it works because Trump can act as a focal point for a certain group identity (MAGA) to form around. Zenya (the MC) is never part of a community, she is always an outsider. At first it’s because she comes from a scholar background, then it was because she’s too much of Vodaya’s (her mentor's) favorite, then it’s because she had a breakdown, etc. We never really see her form close bonds outside of with Vodaya (I mean, we supposedly hear that she had some sort of bond with a character she mentored, but we don’t really see that. She’s also not close to her wing-mates or whatever it was called.). The only reason she’s in the Winged is because she has a close relationship to Vodaya, she wants to protect people, and she likes flying. That’s it. She doesn't have any sort of a group identity or desire for community, because she doesn't get community from the Winged. She does get a relationship to Vodaya, but one relationship does not a community make.

I'm also going to add in, it didn't help that I didn’t buy Zemolai/Zenya as a religious character for a single second. This is relatively common for me—I grew up in a rather religious environment surrounded by other religious people (although not super extreme), and I think there’s a lot of subtle nuances to being in that sort of situation that authors (especially ones who have a more secular background) seem to really struggle to portray, at least imo. Most of the time this doesn’t bother me so much, I just ignore it, but in a book where so much of the plot depended on the MC’s (supposed) relationship to her religion, yeah, it felt super jarring to me when it didn’t really feel like she actually had a real, meaningful relationship to her religion. That plotline just fell flat, and that’s the most important plot line in the book. It kind of just felt like Zemolai remembered that she was supposed to care about the gods whenever it was convenient for the plot, but it just didn't exist in her world view or sense of identity at all beyond that. Like for example, right before the final conflict, she goes to a shrine to pray (because it's important that she's religious for the final conflict, which is part of the plot) and says she hasn't prayed in a while. Presumably this was to show the stress she was in from kind of deprogramming herself. Except, she hadn't prayed at all for the entire book until this point, praying just wasn't a part of her character at all. Again, she's only religious when it's plot relevant. I'll also add in here, organized religion is also inherently social and communal, so a lot of my sense of "she's not religious" was probably tied into the above stuff as well.

There were a lot of circumstances where I felt pretty distant to the main character or like a distant style was being used. The exception to this was the scenes of abuse from the mentor figure, which I thought were well written and powerful (later on when were were being shown Vodaya being abusive, not just being told about it). That being said, there was a lot mostly in the "honeymoon phase" sort of part of entering the warrior sect that felt skimmed over (see also the point about Zenya never really feeling like she belonged or honestly felt that happy). Also the deprogramming/deradicalization arc also felt pretty distant in similar ways, we don't see a sort of desperate hopelessness or sense of loss of community, because Zemolai never had one.

Overall, I wasn't really sold by the character work, and the plot wasn't enough to interest me when the characters and themes weren't working for me. So basically, if you're looking for a book about an abusive mentor mentee relationship, this might work. If you want commentary on extremism in political or religious groups, uh, don't expect much. 

I'm generally a fan of aromantic fairytale retellings. This one was pretty good, but a little bit less up my alley than I was hoping. 

On the positive side, it was nice to see how the author changed details about The Beauty and the Beast to better fit the Nigerian setting. On the other hand... one of my least favorite tropes, as an aromantic person is the "(romantic) love makes you human"/humanizing power of (romantic) love trope (you might be able to tell why I don't like the original The Beauty and the Beast story very much). This book subverted the assumption that it's romantic love that has that humanizing power (which is nice) but it did it by replacing romantic love with queerplatonic love.  That’s not actually as huge of an improvement as it could have been and is still going to feel alienating to some a-specs who feel like they can’t have or don’t want a QPR or a romantic relationship. Basically, it feels like the core premise of what was bothering me, as an a-spec person, about The Beauty and the Beast was still there, which isn't what I generally hope for in an aro fairytale retelling. IDK, I probably should have guessed it was going this way based on the start, and I don't want to blame the author much because it's not like QPR stories couldn't use more rep, but those are my feelings about it.

Also, this story was a little bit too far on the sappy side of things for me personally, but that's just my personal taste. But other than that, I enjoyed the book, with the characters and their struggles. Also, I liked the shout out to Raybearer (as a Nigerian inspired fantasy book with ace rep), that’s sweet. 

This book was a good follow up to book 1 in the series, although it goes in a different direction. I enjoyed having Katherine as a MC, and her and Jane's friendship was my favorite part of the book

especially since it's not often a YA book will end with two girls, as friends, going off on an adventure with one another, instead of having a love interest. The lack of amatonormativity was nice

. I also want to give the audiobook narrators a shout out, they were great at giving the MCs a little bit extra personality/making some of the humor hit.

This book is also pretty dark at times, especially for YA, although things aren't completely hopeless

Poor Jane just has no luck. I'll also note that it was really odd to read a book where the main villain was evil for recklessly developing a vaccine that came out in 2020. I know that it was pulling more from the experiences of Black Americans being used for medical experiments rather than modern vaccine commentary, but it was still a little jarring

. I think the experiences of Black Americans in this slightly after the Civil war era time were well portrayed in this book as far as I can tell, but I'm less sure about other minority racial groups.

Over all, I had a pretty good time.

This is a Ugandan inspired book, which affects a ton of the worldbuilding. At the beginning, there's a brief intro where Dilman Dila explains how singular and plural forms work in Bantu language family, and that's really the first and last time he really explains things in depth for non-Ugandan audiences. Pretty much everything else the reader has to pick up from context (unless they're familiar with Ugandan cultures, then I imagine things would be much easier!). I like this, even though I didn't always get the difference between a muchwezi and a lakwopo etc (there are a lot of different kinds of spirits in the book—and I'm pretty sure a lot of them are take from/inspired by traditional Ugandan religions), it made the setting feel way more immersive. IDK, reading this book really emphasizes how many of the [x culture]-mythology inspired books I've read are probably really simplifying things for Anglosphere audiences.  

You can also tell that a lot of the book is concerned with stuff that's very relevant to Uganda—there's an illness that's very reminiscent of AIDS and a huge part of the book deals with social attitudes towards spirits/traditional Ugandan spirital beliefs. There's also some bits that felt kind of jarring to me probably because of cultural differences (one of the MC's magical powers was the ability to fart/defecate fire, which comes up a lot).

Unlike the last book I read recently with worldbuilding that the reader had to pick up from context (The Archive Undying), in this one, the motivation of the characters were always clear (especially the main character, who is facing an evil spirit called a wor-yama, trying to find a place to belong after her mother died, and trying to figure out who her father was). The prose style/rhythm of the story might also feel a bit odd to some readers, I think because it's going for a slightly more myth/folktale style. I liked it, and I liked the coming of age story that the MC went on, although the ending is pretty abrupt and could have been fleshed out more, imo. 

The worldbuilding in this book seemed pretty cool (AIs, giant mechas, etc), except there's pretty much no exposition so you kinda just have to try to piece things together from context, which is tricky. The bigger problem is that because the worldbuilding is never fully elaborated on, it is really hard to get a sense of stakes or what any character's motivation is. There's a lot of twists and characters changing goals/secretly trying to do something other than they seemed to want towards the end, and none of that had any impact because I didn't understand their motivations in the first place or why one option would be better than the others. 

I'm complaining a lot, but I liked this book more towards the middle (I was having a fun time trying to piece things together), where the ending kind of lost impact. Definitely don't even try this book unless you actively like being confused when reading. 

Mixed bag, I liked some stories more than others. I think I liked more focused anthologies more. Best short stories were Counting Her Petals by Christopher Caldwell and Juan by Darcie Little Badger. Least favorite was Before the Glory of Their Majesties by Minsoo Kang.