storyorc's reviews
643 reviews

Feels like a grandmother introducing you to the idea of keeping only what truly matters. I especially appreciated the challenge to learn to like looking at things as a replacement for owning them. The style is conversational over practical but there were still some practical techniques to try and it is no hardship to listen to the author's life mixed in with her advice. I hope the real value of this book comes when I gift it to my parents.

I am not sure how to take the very end, however -

the claim that if she was not going to die, she would go shopping.

I feel it rather undid the argument that living minimally was its own reward as well.

Screen adaptation now. James Cameron actually went to the Challenger Deep for some insane rich-people reason, he should be eating this up. It's got monsters, it's got dread, it's got bitter not-quite-divorcées. There's even a submersible descent so claustrophobic I wanted to get off the tube early.

An armoured research vessel sails to the deepest part of the ocean to hunt mermaids. It's not a spoiler to say they find them! Grant is not relying on shadows and glimpses to keep her beasties formidable; they're feasting on-page before the Chapter 1 heading. These things have 4 knuckles, move like eels, and can chatter the final screams of your friends as a lure. In the same way Tolkien wrote a book for his language, it feels like Grant wrote Into the Drowning Deep to educate us about mermaids. Linguistics, behaviour, anatomy - all are detailed convincingly enough for this layman. It feels like David Attenborough should be narrating their migration in the next installment of Blue Planet.

An unfortunate consequence of how vivid the mermaids are is that the humans pale in comparison. They looked great at the starting lines - a mermaid truther/company man pair of estranged spouses, a trio of siblings arguing in ASL over whether one should try to make the Challenger Deep descent, a devoted husband-wife duo of ruthless big game hunters - but their promise never crystalised into the drama I was salivating for. Tory, the sister of an mermaid victim whom we follow closest, never felt like much more than that. (Her romantic interest, a cosplayer-turned-media-personality had more to her though, and the Sapphic representation is always nice.)

All the secondary characters and extras have an acute case of Prometheus Syndrome. If had just discovered I was floating over a nest of apex predators with a record of eating people, I would not ignore weird sightings in the water, ignore lockdown procedures, or really even step foot on deck. 
 
The writing was evocative and vivid when it needed to be (when the mermaids were going to town), and never missed a chance to say something ominous about the sea. It could have missed a few of those chances and been tighter for it, in my opinion. Shave off 20% of the length. Maybe do more with the human relationships and

captive mermaid

instead of telling us yet again how the sea would never forgive us for leaving it. Chilling stuff, but anything can get repetitive when its consistently taking paragraphs out of the narrative.

Small complaints, all in all. If you've ever shuddered when something touched your foot underwater, this book'll be a ride.

This YA wizard school book is my favourite political thriller of the year. 

The overwhelming impression I get from A Deadly Education is that Naomi Novik is really, really smart. Here is an author who sets up an original, punishing world and keeps prodding more and more fun plot elements out of it, never popping the membrane of verisimilitude. Never a dull moment in a school where mashed potato can drain your life-force - not even in the book's final sentence! 

Yes, Novik has El info-dump about people and mechanics as they become relevant instead of sowing those details in along the way. Yes, El is bitter and bursting with (well-earned) angst. I give these flaws a soft pass however, since the book is intended for young adults. This style of exposition is the simplest way to ensure the reader has understood the information they need when they need it, and my bitter, angsty teenaged self would have whole-heartedly supported El.

The Enclave kids are also a nice little tap on the shoulder for the reader about opening one's eyes to privilege. They aren't evil, just selfish in a very human way. Much more subtly done than the exposition.

Shoutout to the audiobook narrator, Anisha Dadia, for rising to the challenge of imbuing a standoffish protagonist with real earnestness and warmth.

This YA wizard boarding school novel is the best political thriller I've read in years.

The biggest impression A Deadly Education made on me is that Naomi Novik is really, really smart. This is an author who knows how to set up a novel, dramatic concept, and keep prodding thrilling new plot elements out of it without popping the delicate membrane of verisimilitude. Never a dull moment - even in the last sentence!

Yes, Novik often has El give us the run-down on some person or mechanic of the school just when they became relevant rather than sowing these details in more subtly along the way. Yes, El is painfully teenaged in her (well-earned) angst and bitchiness. I give both these flaws a pass because the book is YA - having the Cliff's notes on Maw-Mouths and Clarita Acevedo-Cruz as they appear is a simple way to be sure the reader understands them, and my bitter teenaged self would have been whole-heartedly on El's side.

Shoutout to the audiobook narrator, Anisha Dadia, who rose fantastically to the challenge of bringing earnestness and warmth to a standoffish POV character.

Blake had to go and get picked up by Tor, didn't she? In my review of The Atlas Six, I said I wouldn't read a sequel unless it was professionally edited and here we are. Good for her, truly. However, for the third book, I demand not only a pro editor, but a mean one.

Loved the initiation ritual the book starts with where each remaining member of the Six 1v1s their mental projection of another. Novel way to sow discord, very dramatic. Interesting picks for who they faced too, especially Reina and especially Callum. Really set my favourite bastard up to live his best drunk mess life for most of the book.

The problem is that, with only a few exceptions, the plot stops after the initiation ritual. It, in fact, goes backward! In the final chapter of Paradox,

Libby returns (more or less through her own volition, off-page) and the gang completes a year of even less consequential academic study before readying themselves to face the mysterious Forum.

In fanfiction, we might call this a very long drabble.

How to write an Atlas scene:
Character A walks up to Character B struggling to cut their eggs or something else domestic.
A: "I hate you."
B: "I'm already bored of/too good for this conversation."
A: "Ironic. The human heart is so weak. Like God, it craves that which must destroy it. Not that I care."
B: "Get to the fucking point."
A: "Together, our powers could reverse the polarity of the archives."
B: "Ah, so you need my help? And I thought you hated me."
A: "I explicitly do not care about you despite spending every day sequestered together for two years. Meet me in the archives tonight. I'm leaving now so Character C can bump into me in the hallway and repeat this."

Sadly for the characterisation, almost all of the Six can and do play both A and B at various points. I am begging these characters to give a fuck. Reina, Nico, and Tristan do have goals but they spend more time negging their colleagues than working towards any. In The Atlas Six, they were learning about each other so the arguments were fresh. Blake is capable of having her characters draw blood in interesting ways but the opportunities - even a ball! - were squandered scratching at old scars.

Two characters did shine through with fun development though. Libby flipped from skippable to not at the end of her side-quest via the scandalous

Dark Side twist

and Dalton's little self-discovery in the final pages punched his personality up into someone I could actually believe might hold Parisa's interest. With those two elevated, Tristan, whose personality I couldn't describe with a knife to my throat, now occupies my least favourite character spot. (Nevermind, I just remembered Atlas exists.)

The pattern in those moments of sunshine, however, is that they all occur, again, solely in the book's final chapters. If The Atlas Complex doesn't feature at least three of the Six screaming at or fucking each other by the halfway point, I'm out.

The way I was made to care so hard about fishing is witchcraft. The simple language and the old man's dwindling dignity and means make reading this as much a trial of suffering and endurance as his battle with the marlin, except not, because that somehow gained biblical proportions. A worthy kind of sadness. Triumph and tragedy, wave after wave.

Juvenile fun, but less original than the first couple and nothing really advanced until the very end. Not to mention the adult who tries to sleep with a 16yr old gets to just laugh it off...? I liked Himeno, the cover character, but she falls into the hopeless, unrequited devotion trope in this volume and becomes less interesting. 

Stellar action scenes. Wooding has the uncommon skill to get your heart pumping without a) losing sight of character, or b) confusing you. Even if you don't follow every individual maneuver, you have a clear enough idea of the flow of a battle to appreciate its highs and lows. As someone who has used many a Hollywood blockbuster action scenes as a bathroom break, I was delighted to find that the action scenes kept upping the stakes, revealing character, and introducing twists that made them more than just dogfight #3.

The pacing is a mad dash between action set pieces but there is the odd catch-your-breath conversation beat thrown in. In a world of airships, pirates, and daemons, I wouldn't want it any slower. There were instances of head-hopping in the middle of an already busy scene that could have used a paragraph break to spare me some confusion, however.

The trade-off for breakneck pacing is that only Frey, Crake, and Jez have any real page time for development. (And I mostly want Frey dead, but we'll get to that later.) Luckily, with the exception of the annoying idiot Pinn, thee generic members of the crew were fairly charming cardboard cutouts. Silo, in particular, was one of my favourites overall, thanks to his concept as the silent, hyper-competent engineer (and escaped slave to boot) despite only having a handful of lines and mostly existing to launder Frey's likeability.

And boy, did Darian Frey need it. I appreciate that his wolfish captain façade is dashed within his first chapters to reveal a trembling shell of a man and that we see him grow over the course of the novel but I dearly wish he'd died in this first chapter, leaving Crake and Jez thrust into the captaincy role. 

A solid redemption arc has two things:

Frey just does the piece of shit part really, really well. He's casually misogynistic*, he's a coward, and he's willing to betray his crew. Every new piece of his backstory we learn shows him enacting one of these faults so spectacularly that you would need a mountain of injustice against him to generate enough empathy to balance it. His becoming less of a piece of shit also relies mostly on snippets of inner monologue about how somehow, somewhere along the line, he started to care for his crew. This is nowhere near as convincing as the repeated acts of not caring we've born witness to. I tip my hat to him for two moments surrounding the Ketty Jay's ignition codes, particularly with Jez, but they cannot outweigh the abject horror that is his past with the pirate bitch queen Trinica Dracken. We learn that he despises her for the very normal reason that

she tried to kill herself when he left her at the altar and their unborn child didn't survive the attempt?? AFTER WHICH, she reveals she had to endure rape and whore herself out to advance in the world of pirates. And what does our rogue-with-a-heart-of-gold say to that? He calls her a ghoul and whines internally about how she's not pretty anymore. That ghoul is a kinder soul than me for not shooting him on the spot.

To pull off a character this awful would require so much more charisma than just being told he is hot - or at least for him to be fucked up in a more interesting way (like Crake!).

One aspect of the ending struck me as rather unpiratey too. Shockingly, I found myself agreeing with Pinn that

helping the cops destroy the pirate haven was no bueno. 100 pirate captains in one place and y'all can't think of a way to screw over the bad guys AND the navy? At least when Captain Jack Sparrow allied with the British, he had plans within plans.

As a final personal insult to myself, the book ends with instructions for how to play this world's version of poker. I'm someone who adores Geralt, yet any NPC who mentions Gwent is dead to me, and they want me to play a card game where drawing a single bad card can void basically any hand? (This is not a serious criticism, enjoy your games of Rake, it just made me laugh.)

On the whole, it delivered strongly on the airship front (lots of cool names for different classes of vehicle and allusions to how they're built), strong on the outlaw front (schemes galore), and the dash of occultism really flavoured up what was already a strong setting. However, if you're looking for a well-developed found family crew, watch Firefly or Guardians of the Galaxy instead, if you want a corrupt, grimy shipping world with less sexism, play Dishonored, and if you're looking for airship adventures with a less shit main character, read Airborn & Skybreaker.

*see my content warnings for details