storyorc's reviews
641 reviews

World like a Studio Ghibli dream, violence to make you wince, and characters who range from trying so hard to be better to monsters with oddly redeeming qualities. The experimental literary device of head hopping into bit-characters for a sentence or two of italics allows people from all strata of this society a voice and makes it feel so alive and extensive. It is one of many examples of how Jimenez infuses the story with empathy to give it depth; he doesn't demand that we excuse wrong-doing, only that we understand it.

The main two characters are exactly the messy and fun relationship needed to anchor such a surreal tale. The framing device of a modern-day emigrant watching the story as a play was atmospheric and provided some cool a-ha moments but might have felt more vital to someone with more similarities in their family history. I was always eager to return to our two heroes of myth.

A little slow in parts but was any other work of fiction in the 70s making an honest effort to imagine an anarchist society like this? Equal parts optimistim and realism, The Dispossessed explores how we might try to set up such a society and the pitfalls of human nature we would have to overcome. 

Flashbacks to our main character, Shevek's life on his anarchic moon are as touching as they are fascinating, filled with imperfect but quite human characters who are really trying. Reading constantly that they work because they want to and that everything they do, they choose it, has the curious effect of making the reader feel they are in a dark little box watching the lid crack open bit by bit. In seeing our anarchists sacrifice for their society, we understand how they can trust that the same society will sacrifice them. The capitalist notion of freedom - "financial freedom", aka "fuck you money" - pales in comparison to a model of freedom where you can trust that you will be able to take what you need.  By the end of the book, you've absorbed enough of their outlook to feel sickened by the capitalist planet Shevek visits instead of relieved by the familiar. 

The anarchists still struggle with the power of peer pressure and environmental hardships from living on a barren moon. It is said repeatedly that anarchism is a process, not a destination - a constant vigilance and revolution against power. Their moon is no oasis yet you yearn to return along with Shevek. 

(Not sure how this ties in yet but another motto of their movement's leader was that there is no journey without return. Thought it runs counter to the spirit of exploration we're used to, it is effective in instilling that yearning as well as presenting an interesting challenge to the ego of the explorer - why explore? Selfishly, or for home?)

 Check content warnings of this review if sexual assault is a trigger.

Went into this thinking the Venom film + fandom were amping up the emotional bond between Eddie and Venom way up, left knowing the comics are right there with them. This volume is great at making you feel the violation whenever anything threatens to rip Venom away from Eddie. Their codependence is the beating heart of any good Venom run and this one knows it. I love how unguarded they are with each other; makes total sense for beings sharing a brain and body and it hurts all the more when they hurt each other. Also the creepy symbiote 'illness' and the lore around this volume's big bad was creepy and cool. Cates is a pro at juggling both the freaky alien lore and very human emotion sides needed for the character.

Difficult to follow Kraven's motivations but I loved his enthusiasm, eating a room full of spiders at the beginning to get into Peter's head. It goes to interesting, unexpected places. Spiderman also displays much more fear and sense of his own mortality than I'm used to, which was sobering in a way that fit this run's conclusion.

Blew my expectations out of the water with how disappointing the characters were. Having heard about this book via dark academia, I was hoping for a slightly tighter If We Were Villains. What I got was a front row seat to the rot of self-delusion.

Tartt comes closest to stating her thesis when one character says "Beauty, unless she is wed to something more meaningful, is always superficial". Even beauty itself does not escape this empty romanticisation, from Julian and Henry's early exchange of "What is beauty?" "Terror." to the first sentence Richard ever learned in Greek being "χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά... Beauty is harsh". These sentiments are intriguing, but characters never posit an explanation of this juxtaposition or what it means for their lives. When pressed, Henry only remarks vacuously that "anything is grand if its done at a large enough scale".

Once crafted, these beautiful images serve as disguises: Francis admits that he "tend[s] to equate physical beauty with qualities with which it has absolutely nothing to do" while Richard writes of his own "fatal tendency to try to make interesting people good", and that "one of Julian's most attractive qualities is his inability to see anything in its true light ... maybe one of my most attractive qualities as well". Henry plants roses in the same garden that homes ferns he picked the day they

killed Bunny

. Richard is capable of sober moments, once calling

Bunny's murder

a "selfish, basically evil act" and sometimes poking holes in Henry's 'logic', but by the end of the novel he is

comfortably back at his delusion, romanticising Jacobean plays as "trapdoors to something beautiful and wicked that trickled beneath the surface of morality"

. Since the beauty-hunting Richard narrates the tale, the entire book threatens to be such a trapdoor to the reader if they allow themselves to be swept up as he is; just look at the dark academia 'aesthetic'.

This friend group is also constantly abusing any substance they can get their hands on with a wantonness that betrays utter horror that they might have to be themselves for a while.

There is a vindictive joy in seeing the beautiful masks crack. For the reader, their morality comes into question with the

Bacchanalia confession wherein they dismiss the innocent, murdered farmer as no great intellect. Delusions of competence quickly follow as they fall apart in the aftermath of their crimes. Henry spends months on an improbable assassination-by-mushroom plan, only to admit in annoyance hours after murdering Bunny that he doesn't know how police investigations work. He also records the initial murder in a diary

.
 
The characters are slower to see these cracks. Francis realises during the

investigation "it's not that we're so smart, it's just that we don't look like we did it",

Charles bemoans

Henry being more worried "if Homer would make a better impression than Thomas Aquinas" while he diverts the cops' suspicions

, and the book is almost over before Richard

likens Henry and Charles fighting to "walking into the cockpit of a plane and finding the pilot and co-pilot passed out drunk".

I feared Secret History would be rich kid apologia but they are out of touch to the point of absurdism. After accidentally

killing the farmer

, Henry has them perform a

pig's blood cleansing ceremony

. Camilla thinks it works.

Bunny is the only character who can

spot a wavering mask early and consistently. Alchoholism, homosexuality, incest, Julian's selective blindness - all are proven astute, yet they're delivered insultingly enough to shock a court jester. Placing him in the role of truth-teller, usually reserved for a Holmsian savant or wide-eyed child, was a masterful stroke by Tartt to confer onto him both the competency to make him a threat and the innocence to prevent us from siding with his murderers comfortably.

Throughout the book, Camilla is an enigma beneath her beauty. Richard repeatedly describes her attractive features as "boyish" or "masculine", her emotions upon seeing

Charles' disintegration

surprise the entire cast, and her motive for

being with Henry blurs from protection from Charles into love

depending on when she's asked. She is never

brought as low as the others (even Henry is cowed in confessing to Julian)

so we never see her truly vulnerable, only superficially. Since Judy Poovey and Sophie Dearbold are genuine and scrutable, I take this masculine opacity, a mix of Charles and Henry's most alluring traits to Richard, to be the only way Richard knows to imbibe Camilla with the substance he imagines beneath her beauty.

Henry's greatest desire being "to live without thinking" is a cruel joke given his academic preoccupation with beautiful ideals.

He claims to be living this way as part of a philosophical argument while hand-polishing the leaves of a rare rosebush. I can't think of a single instance of him acting on a whim. Furthermore, he speaks of his truly thoughtless acts with scorn, not appreciation, and his worst such mistake, letting Julian see the truth of Bunny's accusation letter, marks the beginning of his end. Henry is a hypocrite, calling death the "mother of beauty" yet also describing his "colourless" world before that night as "dead".  He is Richard's snowstorm saviour and his friends' Corcoran tank but also the one who prompted them to two murders, then killed himself as a hasty sacrifice, complete with a declaration of love. His invigoration following the "most important night of [his] life" (read: the murder of an innocent) is not thanks to love or friends worth dying for, but the drama of violence - the opportunity to LARP a Greek tragedy. As Richard says of his motivation for suicide, "he felt the need to make a noble gesture".

Richard's inability to craft an entrancing mask, due to insecurities about his background, renders him forever the outsider.

Henry assures him they found him mysterious, but even when this is shucked, he is often the last to learn things, he is excluded from their entangled sex lives, and he lives apart from them, on campus. Richard feels remorse and wretchedness over Bunny at various times long after the murder but only the thought that Henry had manipulated him into their group to serve as patsy makes him break out into a cold sweat immediately.

Consequently, the saddest part of the entire book to me is

Richard getting shot. His neglectful childhood and all the little ways his wealthy friends thoughtlessly reduce him have been building for so long that the reader is practically gleeful when the bullet hits. Surely, finally, his friends will fuss over him now, but no. Charles shot him accidentally. No-one notices until he declares it and even then -  "somehow, this did not elicit the dramatic response I expected" - there is literally not a single on-page reaction before the scene moves on and Henry's suicide steals the show. His most significant hospital visitor is the ghost of Henry he imagines. It pairs pity with the disgust we feel at his choice of friends and plants the uneasy suspicion that we might be just as weak in his shoes.

Overall, this is a book where everyone gets what they deserve but you aren't exactly happy about it. I love most of these characters as much as I loathe them; the only one I cannot excuse is

Julian, who has the cleanest hands.

More than anything, I'm reminded of the Great Gatsby, not just for its outsider narrator, but for its frustrated condemnation of these silver-spooned scions as "careless people". And to anyone who idealises this Bacchanalian nightmare of a friend group, just do shrooms like a normal college kid.

Finally, I only recommend the audiobook if you want to hear how the author intended sentence emphasis to fall. Although I grew to like the author's voice and accent, it takes a lot of adjusting to feel it belongs to Richard, and the Bunny and Julian voices could have come out of a pair of muppets.

Reading The Sword of Kaigen went a little like...

Chapter 1-3:A fantasy take on a super-traditional Japanese village on a picturesque little mountain by the sea. Ponyo vibes. Creative uses of waterbending, too. This should be fun.

Chapters 4-11: These mother and son characters have some real meat on them. Few odd details in mom's backstory but we're really grappling with our and our nation's failures and how to handle that. Fun but more mature and realistic than expected too.

Chapters 12-13: ML Wang leaps for the title of best cinematic battle sequences in a book. Sanderson, who? Water and ice have never been more badass and the stakes could not be higher. I've never read anything this kinetic; the closest thing coming to mind are beautiful anime showdowns with five years of buildup. When did I start caring about these characters so much? I have to keep catching myself from looking ahead on the page out of sheer anxiety for them. I sat down to read one chapter but end up reading a third of this 650-page book at once.

Chapters 14-17: You can do that??????? Are you allowed to do that in a book??? I almost wish you weren't.

I'm crying over paper for the first time since Fred died.

I have to get up and pace. What is going on. Have not felt this flayed by a fantasy book since the Broken Earth trilogy.

A POV character dying is bold enough but usually those books span years and have like six POV characters who are all adults bringing their demises upon themselves with their hubris. I can only think of one other instance of getting blindsided with a child POV dying and even that was at the end of her book. I feel almost manipulated by being given his POV only to have it ripped away but it set us up to share Mikasi's loss the way a single POV never could have.

Chapters 18-27: We're dealing with the aftermath slowly but anything faster would feel rushed. My nerves are grateful for this slow-acting balm. The big emotional moment is thrilling and well-earned and if it doesn't pack quite as much punch, that's only because we're still reeling from the cannonball to the face that was the previous chapters. Also, though not the smoothest reading experience, there was a beautiful synergy between form and content in Wang giving us a slice of

Takeru's POV in the moment he finally let Misaki see behind his shields. I would have liked him to take over as secondary POV from that point on to keep them as a team at the forefront, since that seemed like the fruit of this book's labour, but I respect that it was ultimately Misaki's story.

Chapters 28-31: Should have been the start of book two but these characters are family to me now so I'm in it to the end. The final chapter also brings in a character who is a lovely way for us to witness just how much

Misaki

has grown. Also, it's cute.

This is the kind of book that makes me grateful for self-publishing as I doubt this non-traditional structure would have made it through a publishing house's edits. Turning the

orphaned superpowered hero

trope on its head was also a colossal risk. However, by having that sneak-attack climax in the middle of the book, we get to keep watching after the point the curtain would usually fall, and see how these characters grow around hardship like the trunk of a tree. It does bear some of the clunkiness of a work without many eyes on it - Misaki's backstory

as a vigilante, complete with a boy called Robin, is tonally jarring (although the idea of her past being a violence 'vacation' is compelling

and the modern elements like internet felt unnecessary - but I'd forgive a thousand more fumbles for the honest, sometimes ugly, depth of character it achieved. 

I really can't speak highly enough about the battle sequence either. Eighty pages of fight-or-flight adrenaline, constantly keeping you on your toes with new techniques, new environments, new stakes. My eyes were dry from not blinking enough. You need to read Sword of Kaigen, if only for that, in the same way you owe it to yourself to watch John Wick and House of Flying Daggers.

Entertaining again. If you are looking to shut off the brain, kick your feet, and giggle, this'll do it.

Maas is clearly trying to bring a layer more nuance than is traditionally typical for the romance genre in having Feyre struggle with her trolley problem murders and not end up with her original love interest. I welcome this. There were even a few lines that captured some real depth and wisdom. It's a step in a nice direction for younger readers, even if we never really doubt that Feyre will heal any more than we doubt that she'll end up with Rhysand. Even if Rhysand turns into a shining beacon of feminism while Tamlin speedruns villainy. Even if it's all as subtle as a bag of bricks to the dome.

Yet again, the side-quest fairies who most closely resemble their mythological counterparts are the most interesting. In contrast to Rhysand's Inner Circle of lovely but not terribly original friends (with the possible exception of Amren), the fairy-fairies are intimidating and otherworldly. We see my favourite Suriel again, and also two (original?) delightfully sinister creatures, the Bone Carver and the Weaver. Feyre's meetings with them are the most memorable and exciting parts of the book and the only time you feel real fear that the heroes are facing something that could ruin them.

The romance payoff works too. Feyre and Rhysand are cute together, dammit, but over 600 pages, even their snarking and flirting grows repetitive. By the sixth obstacle or missed opportunity, I started hoping she'd go yell at Tamlin again just for a change of pace. Even the ending couldn't stop me skimming until Maas finally kicked into high gear with the

Tamlin and Lucien

reveal.

Other things that haunt me:

Mostly, I just wish some of the hard choices our heroes make were pushed and explored further as truly morally ambiguous. And that Lucien was in every chapter.

A thoughtful and detailed political landscape playing host to lovely characters with tragic yet believable flaws.

I especially enjoyed that the queernorm elements of the setting were different depending on the culture - not only nice but worldbuilding too! Kofi knowingly nicknaming Firuz they-Firuz after the Dilmuni style of introduction that was foreign to him was such a dad joke that it instantly established his character and the relationship he would take with Firuz. The differences in gender healthcare between their home and Qilwa provoke a whole subplot with their transitioning brother. Jamnia leverages their worldbuilding very elegantly to add depth.

Blood magic is described with a cool level of detail too. I was not surprised to learn Jamnia is a neuroscientist. The chair they use in training reminded me of  the Guardian's techniques in NK Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy and brought all the same agonising over whether it can be justified again. I would have liked the magical mechanics we were taught throughout the book to have played a bigger role in the final confrontation, however. The technical aspects of that confrontation seemed to go so far beyond what we had learned that they felt a bit deus-ex-machina'ed to me. I also couldn't help wishing Firuz could have

tried Kofi's ideas, via a less murderous methodology. He was groping at a beautiful combination of their practices, only for the story to relax into the playing God/man-gone-too-far trope that felt oddly anti-intellectual for such an intelligent protagonist. But perhaps I'm being naïve

.

Despite the cruelties in the setting, this book felt very safe and kind thanks to its main character. They spend most of the narrative working themselves to the bone for their community. It is nice, but I was most interested in them in the moments they were questioning their assumptions about blood magic, their training, and their culture's complicated history. Afsoneh, on the other hand, kept me guessing whether she would be able to control herself or become a real problem. I might have found the story more engaging from her perspective but I don't at all regret listening to this version. 

Good escapist fantasy. The amount of waiting around in ignorance gets old but the last act pumps the stakes right up and we get to see the protagonist seize the reigns for a finalé with some kick.

The fairy men (sorry, males...) are very pretty and protective and sometimes even funny. The High Fae are a little too close to rich, noble humans for my taste but they get a few cool moments of otherworldliness. It's usually the 'lesser fae' who get those fairytale-style esoteric rules and abilities that are so interesting though; High Fae abilities operate more like superpowers.

While most of the book sits comfortably in the formulaic wish-fulfilment zone (not necessarily a bad thing), there are two things that elevate it. First, the callous stepsister-type character, Nesta, is treated to some nuance that prevents her from just being one more abuser in Feyre's tragic backstory. Second, I've never read a romance that

switches love interests

in the last act! It's like the author realised Tamlin is boring but instead of editing in a personality just

introduced a hotter, edgier version

. The result is an interruption to the formula that has something unexpected to say about how

the right person for you in one phase of life may not be the right person forever

. This is what rescued it from the bad rating I was going to hand out due to the main villain's habit of making insanely detailed and stupid 'bargains'.

Finally, if Lucien has no fans, I am dead. My boy got

treated like a chew toy

in the last act and for WHAT. He wasn't even

following a cool, secret plan like Rhysand, just loyalty and desperation

. And he didn't demand a

permanent body mod and lapdance

like someone for his help either.

This book is funny! Not (often) slapstick or anything but the humourous tone had me questioning its frequent filing under 'grimdark'. Abercrombie does commit to being more realistic about things than your average blockbuster but consistent depressing results quickly become just as predictable as a hero snatching victory from the jaws of defeat and this novel was anything but predictable! Abercrombie has an inspiring habit to resolve his character's tests with neither simply triumph nor defeat but a secret third thing; a triumph or defeat with a twist that acknowledges, then elevates the tension that brought the character to that initial test.

In terms of the larger plot, I could have used a little more predictability. Only Jezel had a clear climax to his narrative in the Contest (which was built to with a very effective subtlety, even in the others' POVs). Glokta benefits from the mystery plot inherent to an inquisitor and Ferro is handfed her goals but Logen is truly just along for the ride. At one point, he even turns down an offer to learn the goals of the people he's helping - a telling character choice, but less so for establishing stakes and something to look forward to. The strength of his characterisation mitigates this but in a book that is almost 600 pages, it cannot do so entirely. I have read that the entire book is setup and, while its vibrant characters do a good job concealing that, I do agree.

And those characters really are vibrant. Prior to reading The Blade Itself, I wouldn't have believed you could make me kick my feet and giggle over a torturer but Glokta is startlingly likeable. He even lampshades it a little, saying something to the effect of 'the worse the man, the sadder his story must be', but his humour, intelligence, and doggedness also play a huge role. Being surrounded by idiots who are either cruel or vapid helps. He is admirable for his perseverance and intelligence, but realistically hampered when he runs into more skilled players. I applaud how Abercrombie is not only unafraid to let him fail but also able to glue his dignity back together after.

Glokta aside, Ardee is a delight, Logen is clever and dependable (though it does feel like we are meeting him at the end of his redemption arc), and I even like Jezel. (Can't defend that one, he's just exactly the kind of character that I find so entertaining to write). Like Glokta, they enjoy nuance: Ardee is confident but her judgement runs questionable, Logen is dependable but still frightened in combat and there is a limit to his sense of responsibility, Ferro is half-feral, and Jezal has moments of genuine bravery and earnest feeling. Abercrombie's talent for characterisation extends to his secondary and even tertiary characters too; there is a masterclass paragraph wherein Glokta meets the faculty of a university and, with only a single clause of description per character, they leap to life not only visually but as people with their own interior lives and faults. 

The scenery gets similar treatment. I can't in good conscience call the prose efficient, what with all the endless list of details, emotions, quick actions. (And no final 'and in sight.) However, I have such strong impressions of the North and the city of Ardua that I feel like I could pick them out of a travel brochure. He avoids White Room Syndrome by striking a balance between a character's interior voice and what they note about their surroundings. Again, he goes overboard on the clause lists at times, but for the most part he is able to pick out just enough details to give, or remind, us of what atmosphere they are currently ruining their lives in.