storyorc's reviews
643 reviews

The Immortals of Meluha by Amish Tripathi

Go to review page

adventurous mysterious reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This book has life and earnest moral exploration, but is not without its stumbles. It faces the dual challenges of being a debut and adapting a nuanced religious story with a mixture of triumphs and issues.

The triumphs:
  • Characters are lively and full of camraderie in a way that makes it clear the author was having fun with them. Shiva especially is so good-natured and earnest he is impossible to hate even when acting ignorant or short-sighted. Tripathi allows all his characters, even villains, redeeming features to humanise them.
  • An indisputable care for detail and research, as becomes obvious in the glossary at the end. From bricks to dress to blessing verbiage, a thousand small details add colour to the world.
  • The ambitious pairing of modern science and ancient beliefs imbibes the fantastical Meluhan society with its magical, unpredictable feel.
  • Sometimes it feels like only debut authors are willing to get messy with their morals. Shiva has done, and does things, that you could easily make an argument for condemning him by. There are also humbling moments where we, with Shiva, are led to consider why a culture might mark its unlucky members as outcasts, and how there might be circumstances in which begging is preferable to welfare. The book doesn't even necessarily condone these things, but it encourages good faith interrogation of another culture's practices.
  • Shiva's revelation in what respect for Sati's choices truly looks like is both shrewdly-earned and shockingly whole-hearted. I struggle to think of another man who commits so fully to that trust.
The issues:
  • The plot feels trapped by the source material at times. Modern storytelling structure is vastly different and difficult to mesh with the tutorly, meandering epic. Relationships go from 0 to 100, victory is never in doubt, and Shiva is always reacting, mostly lacking a clear, overarching goal.
  • The mesh of modern morals, science, and humour with the ancient is often jarring. Characters suffer from this worst; many scenes have a point where it feels like a director calls CUT! and the characters go from performing theatrical roles to the 21st century actors playing them. By frequently taking a third-person omniscient POV, the writing cannot quite unhook from its grandiose origins to manage a grounded, modern take and the marriage of both styles falls short of convincing.
  • A cliffhanger worthy of a Saturday morning cartoon. I hope the sequel has more faith in its ability to keep readers interested without resorting to that because this IS an unusual and interesting project.
  • Constant fat jokes for poor Nandi, who has proven himself to be a great physical warrior time and again. So close to being great fat representation yet instead feels weirdly mean and immature coming from the otherwise-thoughtful Shiva.

I'm not certain I'll continue my journey into Shiva's section of Hindu mythology via this series but I'm grateful for the colourful peek at it.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings
Berserk, Vol. 1 by Kentaro Miura

Go to review page

adventurous dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

If you can manage to read the first few pages through rolling your eyes, it's a decent grimdark adventure. Cool monster design, cool weapons, badass protagonist and a comfortable episodic travelling merc kind of pace with a hint at the overarching quest via the brand. I hope that fairy thing dies next volume though. Hard to say if I like Guts for Guts or just because I've heard he becomes a much more developed character down the line. For the moment, the parts that are there to make you empathise with him are pretty transparent, but there is a smidge of nuance in how clearly in denial he is about not caring about innocents caught in the crossfire. 
Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone by Richard Lloyd Parry

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced
Parry's attempt to translate Japanese culture for his English audience, as well as the exploration of the legal and spiritual fallout elevates this from a venture of morbid curiosity. A good supplement to material produced on the event by the Japanese themselves, and valuable for the insights of those directly affected that it assembles into a wide-lens image of the disaster. 
Our Bloody Pearl by D.N. Bryn

Go to review page

adventurous dark sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

A good book for healing and atonement. I appreciate the author's willingness to make those sins significant even if they did
chicken out from having Perle be the siren who killed Kian and Dejean's parents
in the end. The world is thoughtfully crafted. So glad the author committed to sirens that eat like animals rather than palatable ones! Characters have nuance too, though I would like to see that pushed further; the line between who we're intended to root for and not is still pretty clear. It was a little slow for my taste but there is value in showing that healing is not a one-and-done revelation. Particularly gratifying to see multiple disabilities treated as adjustments rather than one's world shrinking. Oh, and queernorm is always nice.

Sick opening line too.
Chainsaw Man, Vol. 4 by Tatsuki Fujimoto

Go to review page

adventurous dark lighthearted fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Back on form. The devil designs and powers are my favourite part and we get a handful of new ones this volume, including hints at Makima's! Doesn't disappoint. Some depth for Aki and Denji in how they each handle the deaths in the last volume as well.
A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djèlí Clark

Go to review page

adventurous mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

Nothing surprising in the plot but the setting is an absolute treat for the imagination - an impressive amount of worl ldbuilding presented with seeming ease - and the characters are easy to root for.
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande

Go to review page

informative inspiring slow-paced

3.0

Advice is clear and backed up with copious evidence but the practical tips are buried among MANY stories of surgery mishaps and plane crashes. They're interesting too but it would have been nice to have a cheat sheet at the end if that was going to be the delivery style.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Feels like a dramatisation of some expansion of the real Roman empire, almost textbookish at times. The good kind. Lots of fun - I can't believe I'm about to say this - fiscal policy. Got me thinking back to that macroeconomics course for the first time since I wrung a C out of it. My favourite aspect were the legion of dukes and duchesses. They took a while to build up into individuals but by the end, each is stubborn in unique way and ever plotting to screw over their peers. If anything, they were more interesting than Baru.

I applaud Dickinson's willingness to commit Baru to the consequences of her actions. This is not a story where she just looks inside herself at the eleventh hour and defeats her enemies by sheer willpower. As to the ending,
while I was crowing in horrified glee that she actually lived up to the book's title, I do feel that the mechanics of concealing the twist were a little disingenuous. We were privy to her deepest thoughts through her schooling and the first year of Aurdwynn, only for them to silently be withheld when she 'commits' to rebellion, AKA when it would have spoilt the twist? I spent a few chapters at that point confused as to why she'd given up on reaching Falcrest so soon. Ultimately I just went along with it, assuming I'd misjudged her or missed a passage, but in retrospect I'm lightly annoyed at the distance this put between me and Baru's narration when it turns out I actually understood her perfectly! Baru's line about having deceived herself is fine but feels more like an excuse from someone so painfully aware of her sins (especially with all her time spent pondering marriages that would never happen). I would have preferred for her to truly rebel but, after Sieroch, realise Aurdwynn was an audition and then choose to rebel everything she had unreservedly grown to love. Bring us along for the betrayal!
All that said, I am not unhappy with the ballsy outcome we got. The final letter in particular made me get hype for pissed-off-provincial-schemer-bowl.

I advise against the audiobook beyond a pronunciation guide; it took me until the final third to be confident I was matching character names to the right person (especially Xate Olake, Lyxaxu, and Unuxekome).
Penric's Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold

Go to review page

adventurous funny lighthearted relaxing medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

The best aspects of this novella are its gods and the demons, no better or worse than any human, who jump between bodies via death with as much oversight as the church can manage. Bujold makes world building look effortless. In her demons, she also finds an excellent balance between definitely-not-a-human-consciousness and too-alien-for-empathy. Her humans too, benefit from a touch more nuance than the cookie-cutter cruel lords, stifling mothers, and wise tutors of medieval fantasy. The novella displays Impressive range for its word count, cramming in everything from a stuffy arranged marriage to a genuinely unsettling brush with an entity beyond human ken.

The simplicity of the story prevents me from rating it any higher but it is clear this little tale is everything Bujold intended it to be.
Hellblazer, Vol. 8: Rake at the Gates of Hell by Garth Ennis

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional hopeful sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This volume deals with the politics of the day on the ground floor rather than taking shots at the monarchy; both race riots and the Irish troubles. The comic is clearly trying to be pro-black (and very firmly anti-cop) but the modern reader may chafe at how black characters' plots revolve around racism rather than anything fun and supernatural, that they're still more guest stars than secondary cast, and that they continue to be subjected to the most graphic violence. Constantine shows some humility rather than swooping in to save everyone but he also
says a slur as a joke
. Tarantino vibes.

Slimmer pickings for the supernatural elements. Felt like
Gabriel was underused and the First of the Fallen realising his own lore and killing the other two felt a bit of a stretch. Cheapened Constantine's win a little. Ellie stabbing him from behind wasn't nearly as clever either, though I was glad to see her again. New queen of hell anyone? The FotF asking what will happen to him as he dies was freaky and I did gasp a little to see 'Astra' pop up so full of hate.


Surprise standout was the completely unsupernatural issue spent with Kit's family at the end of the volume though. I love a messy family and they did not disappoint. She's no angel either but she does sparkle; here's hoping that was her
send-off for good. Wouldn't kill her to date someone closer to her own age either. Gross to find out she was 19 when she started seeing Brendan, especially since Constantine isn't that much younger than Brendan.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings