tiggum's reviews
727 reviews

This book did absolutely nothing for me. I find it difficult to even describe because it made no impact at all.

The protagonist of this book is supposed to be extremely clever, able to con and bamboozle everyone around him. Unfortunately, the author is not that clever so he just made all the other characters extremely stupid.

Want to get inside the head of the worst man? But in a good way? Read this book.

Not as good as The Cipher, but very much in the same style.

I'm half way through chapter five and I have basically no idea what's happening. There's so much made-up fantasy-language and jargon, and so many flashbacks and perspective shifts, that there doesn't seem to be any kind of actual plot or any character one can get invested in. Maybe it comes together later on, but I've got better things to do with my time than find out.

First, the translation is terrible. It all makes sense and seems to convey the meaning, but it's all written in a really dull, robotic style. Everything is described in the most straight-forward way. It's clearly doing the authors a disservice.

Second, the two stories I read were not good. The first, Hurricane Vaij, is about a private investigator hired to locate a man who's been kidnapped, which he seems to do entirely by luck. And it's hard to tell, given the translation, but the author seems to have some very fucked-up morals and priorities. The client is a politician; the missing man is his son. And they're both power-hungry hypocrites, but I think we're supposed to see them as admirable? The protagonist is worse though. There's one point where he sexually assaults his sidekick and it seems to be played as a joke? Again, the translation makes it hard to tell the author's exact intent, but he certainly isn't supposed to be seen as a bad person for doing it.

The second story I read was much less repugnant, but very, very stupid. The translator and/or editor's introduction to Idhaya 2020 makes the absolutely batshit claim that its author, Rajesh Kumar, has written 1250 novels and over 2000 short stories between 1968 and 2008. 1250 novels in 40 years. Over 30 novels a year. 2-3 novels a month. Assuming that the word "novel" is being used extremely charitably, that's still insane.

Anyway, the second story exhibits the same translation problems as the first, but also demonstrates the author's bizarre thought processes. No description could really do it justice, so I'll just have to include an excerpt. In this scene, an inventor is showing off his new "female" robot (the fact that the robot is female is made a special point of, but I think he's just referring to its appearance) that can "think for herself ... differentiate between good and bad, and make decisions ... shoot down a burglar [and] has strong human values".

I automatically have a less positive impression of this book than I might have just because it's historical fiction, which makes me suspicious of it. I can't help but wonder, the entire time I'm reading, "how much of this is bullshit?" Creative non-fiction is a weaselly genre that gives you the cachet of non-fiction with the freedom of fiction, and makes it extremely easy to mislead your audience - whether you intend to or not.

I was also a little thrown off by the way it's all written in first-person present tense but doesn't match with how the character would actually have written or spoken at the various points in her life at which it's set. Her voice doesn't change at all as she ages from 5 to 15.

That aside, the book is easy to read and the characters are vivid and believable. Unfortunately, the protagonist is just not a person I liked or cared about - and I'm pretty sure I was supposed to. Her life seemed largely frivolous and she never seems to have any clear motivation other than to not do what's expected of her. That's a fine starting point, but what does she actually want instead? I've finished the book and I don't know.

We also don't get any sense of the larger historical context or Marguerite's place within it. She's born into power and politics but that's almost irrelevant to the book. It makes the entire story seem kind of a waste of time. What's all this leading to? Nothing that matters.

The characters are unlikable and the plot is uninteresting. Didn't even make it through the first story in this collection.

I asked for someone to recommend me an Ursula Le Guin book that's a stand-alone story (as opposed to a series or trilogy or whatever, because I know what fantasy authors are like) and they told me this one, despite technically being part of a series, is entirely self-contained. And it is. I don't know that it was a good recommendation though, because now I don't know if I just didn't like it much or if I'd have gotten more out of it if I read them in order.

It wasn't bad. It's certainly well-written. There are some engaging ideas in there. It's just that not much happens and then it just kind of ends. It's not like it leaves things unresolved or tries to bait you into reading the next one, it's just that it's a sort of naturalistic story so there's not really a clear "everything is resolved and he lived happily ever after (or didn't)" type ending. Shevek just continues to live his life, I guess.