wendleness's reviews
324 reviews

While things began kicking off in the world and surrounding areas of Ismyre itself in the previous two books, this one focuses on a place outside of Ismyre’s control. A school for orphans who have divination powers.

When our main character, Miriam, begins having reoccurring dreams about the end of the world, she asks her teachers for advice. Then she and her friends have to decide if they are going to try to help save the world or stand by and watch it happen.

As the title suggests, the tower and the sea are featured locations, and I couldn’t get enough artwork of the sea. I found it gorgeous and completely mesmerising, whether there were boats traversing the waves, characters standing by the sea, or simply speech bubbles overlaid on the endless blue.

A slightly longer review can be read at my book blog: Marvel at Words. 

I loved this premise. A duel timeline telling the story of Ruth’s life the year leading up to, alongside her life following, an unspecified apocalyptic event. The “Before” and the “After”. This set up creates a loop, with the end of the book catching up to the start of the book and I eat that kind of shit up. I re-read the prologue once I’d finished the book, and it’s very clear the author put a lot of thought and attention in to it. It draws on details throughout the book and the true meaning of it only becomes clear once you’ve finished the book. I don’t want to say more and ruin the effect, but it’s a wonderful piece that brought tears to my eyes.

I enjoyed the unspecified apocalyptic event. Well, not the event, per se, but the unspecified nature of it. All through the Before sections of the book there are underlying hints of something going on. Other people discuss politics and news reports, but Ruth completely avoids it. It depresses her and she’d rather live her life ignorant of the misery suffusing the world. This gives a huge mystery to what actually causes the end of the world. Narratively this allows the story to focus on the characters and their journeys, rather than larger world events, which is fine and good. But it also gives the reader room to speculate and conjure up their own ideas, and means whatever happened can always be relevant—old politics and world threats can’t go out of date if you’re not specific about them.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Ruth. And as the main character that holds a lot of weight. I didn’t hate her by any means, but I didn’t often find her sympathetic. She sleeps with a married man, she cheats herself, she seems somewhat stuck and perpetually unhappy in her life. Which, in contrast with After, I suppose might be the point. She comes to find herself and enjoy her life only when she has lost everything else. It didn’t make her any more likeable, though.

I preferred the early After chapters and the later Before chapters. So, really, the core story of Ruth travelling to New Zealand, the apocalyptic event happening, and her life immediately afterwards. This book balances both a plot- and character-driven story, and I was definitely more invested in the former.

A longer review can be read on my book blog: Marvel at Words.

My biggest gripe with this book would be the length. It did not need to be 600 pages long. There wasn’t enough plot or action to warrant the amount of words. It was only really the last 150-200 pages where things really picked up. Most of the book sees Todd and Viola having the same conversations over and over again. No one trusts the Mayor but they’ve got to keep an eye on him. No one trusts Mistress Coyle but they’ve got to get the truth out of her. Everyone wants peace but some people want glory to go along with it. Yadda, yadda, yadda. As much as it was easy to read, a large chunk of the book felt like a bit of a slog. I’d read 40 or 60 or 80 pages but the plot wouldn’t have moved forward much at all.

Despite some issues there were a lot of things I loved. I loved the Spackle—the Land—finally being fully involved and learning more about them. I loved the parallels between Todd and the mayor, Viola and Mistress Coyle, and the Return and the Sky. The parallels weren’t exactly subtle, but seeing all these characters, ostensibly from different groups and culture and backgrounds, all going through the same struggles and learning the same lessons was really quite powerful.

Of course the best thing about the book, the driving theme of the entire story, and the thing I’m still thinking about, is summed up nicely by the title. Throughout the book the overwhelming message from the several groups of people is a desire for peace. A desire to live a simple life without fearing for their lives or having to take up arms. Yet it is the actions and desires of a few—the few in charge, the few with power and influence, the few with selfish personal motivations—that dictate the course of action. That create monsters out of people and drag them into a war they’d rather not be fighting. It is a depressingly accurate account, I think, of power and how those who have it often choose to wield it.

A longer review can be read at my book blog: Marvel at Words. 

 My very favourite thing about this book is characters describing technology and other old-word items that they’ve never come across before, but are well-known things to the reader. It’s like a guessing game. A large piece of tech hammered together out of sheets of metal with wheels inside a great big metal band and a pipe sticking out. A soft slippery cloth puffed up like a pillow. Any guesses? There are loads of them, and I love it!

Language is another great thing. Seeing how it has evolved over time or how old and unknown words are pronounced and interpreted to make sense with the words people already know and understand. Mythen Rood, for example, had a previous and similar sounding name we’d be more familiar with. Koli doesn’t know how you communicate with tech and so when he learns the word he calls it an in-their-face. This shit is freaking catnip to me, I can’t get enough of it.

I don’t think I have ever been so keen to get on and read the next book in a series. There are so many hints and clues and foreshadowing and points to connect. I have theories, and I need to know how everything comes together, when and what details are revealed, and what the hell happened in the past and will happen in the future. Most of my theories involve Ursula. She knows so much. How? Who was she before she became a wandering doctor-of-sorts? How old is she? I have some ideas. I also kind of maybe half suspect (or, at least, I want to believe) that this story is set in the far flung future of The Girl With All the Gifts. It’s a stretch, but noxious trees and enough time… let me have this.

A longer review can be read at my book blog: Marvel at Words. 

My good friend Jonathan Harker is our first main character, and it was easy to like him. He’s noting all these strange and unique things about his host, Count Dracula, but brushing them off while I’m there mentally screaming at him about the very obvious elephant vampire in the room. My two very favourite characters are Mina, Jonathan’s wife, and Van Helsing. They are honestly the only two with any sense and respect each other a lot. And okay, I have a soft spot for Quincey whose head is “in plane with the horizon” but the four young men are mostly just muscle and money.

Despite that, though, there is a fair amount of misogyny. “Poor Madam Mina, we must protect her” etc, etc. As if they would have got anywhere without her, honestly. It’s certainly a product of its time, though, and Mina is a badass, so I’m willing to not hold it against the book… too much.

My biggest criticism, towards the end of the book as Mina was travelling through Romania towards Dracula’s castle in Transylvania, was Stoker’s missed opportunity for a callback to Jonathan’s original journey at the start of the book. Imagine it. Mina partaking in local cuisine and thinking to herself: “So this is the paprika Jonathan wrote of in his letters… it’s not that spicy.”

A longer review can be read at my book blog: Marvel at Words. 

A tale of the chaos of a group of people begrudgingly entertaining a middle aged lady’s frightened hallucinations about the end of the world and the slow meander they take into believing them, stockpiling supplies, saying goodbye to everything they knew, and readying the house for the coming end of days and ushering in of the new world.

How the characters all manipulate each other, show open animosity, but still somehow mostly get along is… fascinating. And seeing them on this journey to accepting the world is going to end, what that means to them, and how they hope the new world and they themselves will be changed… It’s equal parts meaningful and ludicrous and I loved it.

For a psychological end-of-the-world horror story, I perhaps laughed a little too much, but as the reader I could enjoy the comedy in those moments the characters couldn’t. What I could also see, that the characters couldn’t, is that they were shielding themselves from the outside world and whatever catastrophe might be coming, when all along the real horrors lay inside the house with them.

A longer review can be read on my book blog: Marvel at Words. 

There were many layers to the story that I really loved. It’s a science fiction mystery—what the hell is Area X and what is happening there? But it’s also a character study of our main character, the biologist—her desire for solitude, her preference to stand apart and observe, her reticence to open up and share herself with others. And it is also about the biologist’s relationship—how she and her husband tried (and failed) to understand each other, what kept them apart, and what pulled them together. And all these things, too, link back to and provide further depth to Area X.

Annihilation is a very well-crafted story. One that I will be thinking about for a while yet. I love how open everything is. We are given so many clues and so much information, but absolutely no answers. As wildly as the biologist observes and speculates, that’s also all the reader can do.

A longer review can be read at my book blog: Marvel at Words. 

Spanning childhood all the way to adulthood in a rough chronology, Kobabe takes us on eir path of self-doubt and self-discovery. The artwork is deceptively simple yet evocative, the designs fun and interesting, the dialogue and turns of phrase vivid and witty. It was a joy to be swept along in eir story.

I would like to think that everyone could relate to at least some of Kobabe’s early experiences, but I might be being naive in that assumption—simply because I related to parts of eir story, doesn’t mean everyone will. But I do hope those that can’t relate can at least begin to understand.

This really feels like a required-reading book, and covers things not often discussed openly (or at all) in such thoughtful and accessible ways. I thoroughly enjoyed and high recommend it.

A slightly longer review can be read on my book blog: Marvel at Words. 

 To Be Taught If Fortunate is heavier on the science aspect of science fiction that Chambers' previous books, but it is all explained in lay terms, and then built up to explore larger concepts and themes. Those concepts and themes then ultimately lead back to humanity and the big questions of life in general and. It’s just. Perfect.

What stood out most for me with this book were the emotions. For a story with a lot of science, it’s all so intrinsically rooted in the human experience and there wasn’t a section I read during which I didn’t cry. This story made me feel so much. I was almost full on sobbing by the end.

Talking of the end… well, I don’t want to spoil it. But it was my favourite kind of ending. So many questions and not enough answers. I’m still thinking about it now. About the possibilities and what they would mean.

I just really bloody loved this one, okay?

A slightly longer review can be read on my book blog: Marvel at Words. 

While the first book in the series was mostly beautiful, quiet moments between characters and minimal plot, this book was mostly plot with a few significant moments between a whole new cast of characters. It was different, but also the same.

The art has the same dreamy quality, with the simple colour palette blending together and stark contrasts in turn, creating such a variety of moods. And the line work keeps the same casual almost haphazard style while also being incredibly detailed. I remain in awe of the art and any frame or page would look gorgeous framed and hung.

A slightly longer review can be read on my book blog: Marvel at Words.