2019 in Books

Posted on 04/01/2020 by Roseanna

best-animation-books-1103x575-1A slightly belated annual roundup of the books I read in 2019… but a much happier one than usual – I completed my reading goal! I managed to miss out on my traditional summer reading slump, and so hit my target of 75 books in mid-December (and then had a bit of a pathetic December but NEVER MIND I still did it).

It’s been a good year for books, even aside from that, though. If you’ll permit me to get a bit nerdy, I’ve been using a spreadsheet to track my reading (Goodreads just isn’t enough – no graphs) and there’s some interesting shifts compared to the last two years. Primarily – the number of 1 star reviews I gave has massively dropped (3 stars and 5 stars have gone up, 1, 2 and 4 stars have all gone down). I’ve read fewer books I’ve hated this year! Which sucks for my blogging, but makes for a much happier reader. Mostly, this will be because the Hugos/Nebulas were far more “meh” than “fuck me, what is this shit” than they have been previously. I will absolutely take it. And I suspect this may be behind my actually finishing my reading goal – clearly my summer slump is borne of despair at all the 1 star Hugo nominees, and without that moment of bleakness, I happily carried on reading instead. I suppose it’s too much to expect that this happens again this year?

In other good news, I completed both Nebula and Hugo readalongs once again, and did so before the winners were announced, so I could make my (incorrect) predictions. The boyfriend once again joined me for Nebulas, but also did the Clarke awards, making me jealous of his higher quality new reading. I did not decide to add a third award to my own reading, because well… I wanted to actually finish my goal. I’m not totally daft.

The blog… was less successful. 2019 was heavily characterised by late blogging and rushed jobs, and I think this is down to higher volume. 76 is a lot of blog posts to write, especially when the majority of them go over 1,000 words. Wait, does that mean I’ve written over 76,000 words this year? Blimey. That’s like, a whole book in and of itself, right? Weird to think of it like that. That being said, I think I’m going to let my “blog every book” stricture drop. Some of them – especially graphic novels and sequels in long series – are just too hard to blog about, and the lack of inspiration keeps leaving me in slumps. I’ll aim to focus on ones I think will make interesting discussion, with an eye to blogging between half and two thirds of what I’ve read. This will hopefully cut out some of my more bland posts as well, so everybody wins, right?

In terms of the numbers, I also continue to be successful at reading women. I never aim to hit a particular target, or read more women specifically, but I like to know what proportion of my reading is female-created, and this year, I managed 63%, a slight increase both on last year and on my average. I need to be better about reading authors of colour, as I only managed around 26%, and I’ve still not been able to accurately track LGBTQ+ authors, because finding that information online isn’t always possible. But the aim is to keep trying to read marginalised voices where I can, and make sure it’s something I’m aware of in what I’m choosing.

But now, onto the important bit – the books, and my silly awards!

Best Book of the Year

A staggering 30 books got 5 stars this year, so this is going to be damn near impossible to judge. Nearly all of those books are in the running too… argh. If it really comes down to it, I’m picking between The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie, A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine and Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay. They all absolutely deserve a top spot, but I think the one that pains me most not to pick is The Raven Tower, so it makes the grade. Also I’m not over having a signed copy of Ancillary Justice so extremely partisan preferences.

Best SFF

So obviously that would be The Raven Tower, but I’m not gonna double pick it because that would be boring. So, options are: A Memory Called Empire, which is beautiful and hit me right in the classicist feels, The Priory of the Orange Tree, which is a heckin’ chonk of high fantasy and yet somehow entirely brilliant – I couldn’t put it down, This is How You Lose the Time War, which better bloody win the novella category in the Hugos, Gideon the Ninth, for defying its entirely silly premise to be an actually brilliant book, full of great character work and funny one liner, and Lord of Emperors for different classicist feels (and all of the sadness).

Difficult though it is, this one is going to A Memory Called Empire, for giving a beautifully realistic portrayal of the allure of a different culture, even while that culture is overcoming your own. For me, there were classics feels alongside all the really good commentary on cultural colonialism, as well as the wonderful use of poetry and relationships, and the feeling of living in a world you can never fully understand. I cannot wait for the sequel.

Best LitFic

Actually a surprisingly sparse category this year, but there were still some solid options. Ghost Wall was just… yeah. Sexism and classism and difficult families and so so beautifully written it hurt. The Porpoise, which took a myth and turned the creepy riiiiiight the way up. And How to be Both, a late contender that defies description but nonetheless was full of feeling. I think this one goes to Ghost Wall, for just being a perfect snapshot of so many things that matter.

Best Graphic Novel

Despite the series ending on volume 9, WicDiv Vol. 8 is the one that makes the shortlist her for me, by being a weird collection of disparate things that somehow pull not just the volume but the whole series together, alongside Sensible Footwear, a history of LGBTQ+ in the UK that I (and probably a lot of other people) need to know, told from a funny and engaging personal perspective, and Die Vol. 1 which possibly benefits from my reading it while listening to emotive music but I don’t care. And Die wins because oh my GOD the feels.

Worst Book of the Year

This one is at least easy this year – it goes to the only book to which I gave 1 star. So congrats, Space Opera by Catherynne Valente. You stood out of the crowd by trying to be cute, funny and unsubtly Douglas Adams and failed at the first two spectacularly. You bored me, made me cringe, and gave me a lovely familiar sense of woe about reading the Hugo nominees. A deserved winner.

Stupidest Book

Not the worst, because it didn’t get 1 star, but sufficiently ridiculous as to warrant its own special category – Children of Blood and Bone turned out to be a really rubbish scene by scene retelling of Avatar: The Last Airbender, with added bonus of cringey romance and creepy, creepy obsession with how people smell. The fact that it’s apparently won awards boggles the mind, and so frankly makes it the Eragon of a whole new generation. Seriously, what’s wrong with people?

Other Special Mentions

Best Poetry – The Half God of Rainfall by Inua Ellams… partially because it was wonderful, and partially because it turns out he’s responsible for most of the theatre I’ve loved the most this year.

Feelings Murderer – Guy Gavriel Kay, for multiple novels, but particularly finishing of The Sarantine Mosaic books with Lord of Emperors and giving me ALL OF THE SADS about the Roman Empire and the death of Justinian I. He keeps making me upset with his words and I keep reading them. Alas.

Book Most in My Wheelhouse – despite actually being a pretty packed field this year, the collection of short stories The Mythic Dream, has to win it. So many authors I love. So much mythology I love. It was just perfect.

All in all, a really strong year for SFF this time around, and I really hope to see it reflected in the awards in 2020… seriously there will be trouble if one of The Raven Tower, Gideon the Ninth, The Priory of the Orange Tree or A Memory Called Empire don’t win the Hugo novel category. And likewise This is How You Lose the Time War for novella. They’re just all… so good.

So, did I meet my resolutions for this year?

  1. Continue the Hugo and Nebula read-along. Yep! We’re getting good at this.
  2. Meet. My. Damn. Reading. Goal. FINALLY YES!
  3. Keep reading current fiction, both SFF and literary, ideally from 2018/19. Definitely yes – I managed 40% of my reading being published less than a year before I read it.
  4. Related to which, read at least one book from the Booker or Women’s Prize shortlist. Aaaahhhno. Alas.
  5. Keep blogging, but with permission to keep it short for things where there just isn’t all that much to say. Hopefully, this year, we’ll stay up to date. Didn’t really stay up to date, but did blog everything, so I’ll call that a win. And did go a bit shorter on the difficult ones.

So I think a good amount of success there.

Looking forward to next year, I think I’ll stick with keeping it simple, as 2019 was about my best year on these so far:

  1. I considered dropping the Hugo reads, because I do often struggle with them (people like shit books, what can I say), but it went better in 2019, so go on, I’ll stick to both Hugo and Nebula.
  2. Keep up the 75 book reading goal (lol, definitely not making it bigger, not a fool).
  3. Keep reading current fiction, maybe aim to get that up to 50%.
  4. Read one book from the Booker or Women’s Prize shortlist.
  5. Reduce the blogging – just do the ones I think are interesting or worth talking about, keep it to about 2/3 of books I read, or thereabouts.
  6. Read more litfic. I love it, it makes me happy, I should stick with it.
  7. Read more non-fiction.

I think those are all absolutely achievable, and if I do, will make my 2020 a good year of books. If anyone wants to do the readalong of the Hugos/Nebulas, give me a shout so we can discuss at the time* – it’s always good to have people to chat to about this stuff.

Fingers crossed for another year of good books, beautifully written books, feminist books, extremely gay books, and books that make me have an enormity of feelings.

*My intention is always to read all the novel category before the winner is announced, so I can a) make a prediction on who’ll win and b) declare my interest in who I want to win.

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The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern

Posted on 03/01/2020 by Roseanna

91nlzhcc8nlAnd my final book of the year – a present to myself for finishing my reading challenge! I picked something I figured I’d enjoy and be able to plough through, something that definitely felt like a reward. And huzzah, I picked good. If anything, I picked better than I expected, actually.

I enjoyed The Night Circus. Was it a stunning feat of literature? No. Was it a really good example of romance and a nice setting? Was it super readable? Yep! So I was expecting something along those lines again with The Starless Sea. But it seems Morgenstern has decided to up her game. The Starless Sea is… weird. In a good way. It starts out seeming to be massively pandering to people who are self-consciously “book lovers”, which in general I find kind of patronising. Books that do it tend to go over the top, in a way that makes me feel like… “yes, I like books too, but it’s not my only personality trait, and it doesn’t make me a better person so maybe we can all calm down a bit and do some story instead?”. I suppose it’s like any book pandering to a type – it’s going to hyperfocus and feel really self-congratulatory. And at the start, it absolutely feels like this is what’s happening here. But… it does calm down. It does get better. And it stops being obsessed with bookishness as an identity. And indeed, does some story instead.

And when we get to doing the story… yeah it’s really really good. Because she’s not doing something predictable and focussed like she did with The Night Circus. She’s made something that’s just… itself? I wasn’t really sure where it was going most of the way through, and so was more just along for the ride and full of curiosity. She’s pulling in lots of different strands, and spending a lot of energy creating an interesting world, and multiple vignettes that all pull together in the end.

The writing has also definitely got better. And don’t get me wrong, I liked it before, but it wasn’t particularly special. It was fine, but not interesting. Now it’s definitely interesting.

But “interesting” often means “really hard to describe to other people” so once again I’m failing at my self-appointed role here. If I describe it as “a story of a guy finding a secret other world” it sounds… I mean, not boring, but not exactly new or interesting. It’s part adventure, part mystery, part purely atmospheric, part romance, part… just… stuff. It’s ideas, mainly. It’s the idea of what stories are, for different people, and about wanting stories, and wanting to be in them, and what that really means for people.

The thing I think I’ll find interesting (and relies on people telling me, so please do if you read this and it applies to you) will be whether people who loved The Night Circus love this too, because to my mind, they’re really quite different. This feels, to me, more literary, more accomplished, more thoughtful and more prosey. I’d love to find out if other people feel the same.

And that’s me done for 2019! Round up of the year shortly to follow.

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How to be Both – Ali Smith

Posted on 03/01/2020 by Roseanna

81yy3te2bfilI’ve been meaning to read an Ali Smith book for ages. However, that book was Autumn, which I’ve still not got round to acquiring. But! This one was great, so in fact this has served to give me a kick to maybe actually get around to buying Autumn, so all’s well in the end I guess*?

Anyway, this was a present, I knew nothing about it going in, and didn’t even read the blurb before starting reading. The only reason I didn’t get to it sooner (I think I got it for Christmas 2018, oops) was… really stupid. The cover reminds me a lot of the cover of I Capture the Castle, and the authors have the same surname… so in my mind the two got kinda mushed together and I just kept putting it off and off and off some more because ehhhh. Purely based on a vague resemblance. Because I’m an idiot**. But I got my arse in gear because I knew I was being stupid, and it turns out to have been entirely worth it.

That being said, it was also really rather odd.

The story follows a girl who’s recently lost her mother, and finding a new friend at the height of her despair. But it’s also about art. Because of course. The friendship, the memories of her mother, and the art trip she took to Italy to see a specific painting all weave together in sadness and joy, so it’s sort of… a lot of things all at once.

It also pivots around 2/3 through the book, to be something else entirely. In a lot of books, this would be a misstep – it really didn’t work in Seveneves for instance – but here? It works for me. It’s a total shift, the tone, the narrator, everything is extremely different, but it casts a different light on the first part, and makes you see the characters through a different gaze, and rethink the world they live in, because it draws you out of the original first person narrator.

It’s also an intensely languagey sort of book. I enjoyed it so much just for the prose. Every word felt deliberate, and they built a vivid imagery, as well as just… being lovely as prose.

For a book about grieving, it’s in many ways surprisingly upbeat. I suppose it’s more a book about moving on from grief, but still. At no point does it undermine the validity of her grief – and it often portrays how strangely that grief can manifest, and how intensely – but at the same time ultimately focusses on how one finds a way out, in this case by finding friendship. Though it never loses sight of some of the persisting obsessions that grief brings along with it. The protagonist moves on in some ways, but not in others – it’s allowed to complicated.

It’s a complicated book, really. It’s lots of different things all at once, so I’m struggling to really blog about it because it just… is? But what it is was extremely enjoyable, well written and engaging, and balanced the sadness and the hope really well. It makes me all the more excited to finally get around to buying and reading Autumn.

 

*Only true if I actually acquire Autumn, so we shall see.
**Actually, on reflection, I’m even more of an idiot. It doesn’t look like I Capture the Castle. It looks like the other book that lived in the same pile as that book for months and months, which I never read because it looked awful (some true crime book about someone who was imprisoned in a basement). But that cover is associated with ICtC in my head because they were… in the same place? Brains are weird.

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Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng

Posted on 01/01/2020 by Roseanna

81vfcosfnslAfter I enjoyed Little Fires Everywhere so much, obviously I wanted to read Ng’s first book. Oh how convenient, someone could lend it to me. Hurrah! *consumes voraciously*

Because yeah, she’s just… really good. And this was no different in that regard.

Actually, it’s no different in a lot of regards. I don’t mean that as a criticism – to some extent, why change what you’re doing if what you’re doing is great, right? – but I think the way in which both these novels are great is really very similar. They deal with similar (if not the same) themes, and deal with them in similar ways. They’re set in similar, small town US settings, with the dramas and tensions that come with being there, and in families on the borderline of traditional prosperity, looking at the concept of the in group, and of defying that conception of normal. And, which I think is the standout thing done well in both, they look at how this world is seen through the eyes of a teenager, and portray teenage/adult conflict with a sensitivity that sees and portrays sympathetically both sides of the conflict. There’s not a right and a wrong, there are just different contexts, different positions or views on the world, and the tragedy is in how these views can’t be reconciled until it’s too late, until some terrible thing has happened.

And like, sure, maybe if I read fifteen novels by her that dealt with this, I might get bored of it. But not yet. It’s a very rich vein for emotionally strong novels.

Everything I Never Told You looks at the life of a mixed race family in small town America in the 1970s. It talks about the difficulties faced by their children, the weight of the expectations laid upon them, but also about the difficulties the parents faced growing up, and what led them to the position they found themselves in. The story looks backwards and forwards, following the tragic death of their elder daughter in 1977 (not a spoiler, I think it’s on the blurb and happens very early in chapter one). The characters are examined in light of their ongoing reactions to her death, and the book slowly explains through these looks back and forward how she came to die, and her life running up to that point.

But, for all that the death of Lydia is crucial, and understanding why it happens drives the plot along, it’s not really what the book was fundamentally about, or why I kept reading. It’s far more about the tensions between people, how they relate, how the weight of their own or others’ expectations moves them forward. And yeah, I love a character book.

There are some really really sympathetic ones here too. The elder brother and both parents are really well drawn… I found the mother particularly compelling. We see her growing up, wanting to be more than a homemaker, a wife and a mother, and we see how her aspirations as a child influenced her attitude to her own children. She’s both extremely sympathetic and extremely damaging to her family, and the book is unflinching about portraying the bad things she does, or the bad outcomes her seemingly benign actions have, without excusing them, but providing us the context so we see why she brought herself to that point, why it all seems to make sense to her. No one is a villain, but so many of the characters end up doing terrible things. Yeah, very satisfying to read if you like good characters sketches.

The front cover has a comparison to The Lovely Bones – unsurprising, given they both feature early dead daughters – and I think it’s a fair one. I enjoyed both. But I honestly think this one is better – and that’s mostly down to pacing, at least if I’m remembering The Lovely Bones accurately. I feel like Everything I Never Told You strikes a much better balance between flashback and present moving forward, whereas TLB spent a touch too much time in the sadness that followed the death. Which was absolutely the point there, but if you’re drawing comparisons, I think this one gets the benefit. It has a really well measured pace, and it never really feels like we’re being dragged away from a plot thread into a flashback or vice versa. Everything happens at the right time, in the right way, and pulls together gently yet firmly in a really emotionally affecting resolution.

Ng clearly knows how to write a book that hits you in the feels, while doing a solid critique of expectations, what society finds “normal” and how this hurts people who live on the margins of it. They’re not books just about people, but they do the people so well that they’re worth it for that alone. They’re thoughtful, insightful and measured, and I really enjoy the obvious skill that’s gone into making them.

So yeah, loved it, Ng is great, will absolutely read again.

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Moonstruck Vol. 2: Some Enchanted Evening – Grace Ellis

Posted on 31/12/2019 by Roseanna

710lsuv2beblI gave in and bought the second one. It was lovely, enjoyable fluff, so I figured I couldn’t really go wrong looking for more of it, could I?

Ehhhhhh… well.

I mean, it wasn’t bad exactly. It was just… eh.

I think actually the problem was that it tried to do a real, actual plot, with proper drama and… well, that wasn’t what I was here for. Also it just wasn’t very good at it. Obviously by reading the trades rather than the issues of a comic, I’m getting a different experience, but honestly I don’t normally much notice where each issue begins and ends. The ones I’ve read tend to have formed good, coherent, cohesive stories outside of the bounds of issue by issue. But this one was… weird. Not only could I tell where each issue started and stopped, but it felt like there were weird gaps in the story between each one, like I’d somehow missed a crucial point. If I’d been reading issues, I’d likely have assumed I’d skipped one somewhere. But here I can’t really fall into that. And some of that missed information sort of got sussed out later, but some of it just… didn’t. I either inferred from context or from having read enough stories that relate to fairies that hey, this is probably what they’re going for right I’ll just assume that and move on. Obviously some stuff you have to figure out yourself. I’m not suggesting they should have been patronising me instead, spoonfeeding every bit of context and info, but you need some. You need to actually understand what’s going on, how their setting behaves, even just a little bit.

And then because it’s somewhat more plot focussed than vol. 1, you get less of the interpersonal fluff. It’s still here and there, but it’s not the primary goal anymore… which is rubbish because that’s what it was good at. I enjoyed the dynamics and the scene setting and the cute aesthetic and this charming little world being built. I liked the fluff of it. But the fluff massively suffered by making it too much an actual story. Which is at least an innovative problem for second books in a series, I guess?

All in all, very disappointing. Didn’t hang together as well as the first volume, and tried to stray outside of its previous strong points, failing all the way. I’ll be a touch more cautious about buying the third volume, though I am still somewhat sucked in by the art and the cosiness of it all. Not totally ruling it out, but less exciting that volume 1 led me to hope.

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The Wicked + the Divine Vol. 9: “Okay” – Gillen, McKelvie, Wilson, Cowles

Posted on 31/12/2019 by Roseanna

the-wicked-the-divine-vol-9-okay-tp_621f0db97cI managed to read a comic series that GOT TO THE END. Like, the actual, planned end, not “oh, soz, guess no more Ody-C for you”. I have the full set nicely lined up on my bookshelf! How exciting is this! Seriously, they go from white in vol 1 to black in vol 9 via shades of grey, they look really cool all together. It’s great.

Also, it was a great volume to end a pretty great series, that too. Definitely better than “Okay”.

I think primarily what worked is they’ve paced the whole series really well – it feels like an actual, proper arc from beginning to end, with a minimal amount of filler-y middle padding. And even the volumes that weren’t directly plot driven, still felt relevant. Frankly, my favourite volume is probably the collection of assorted bits and pieces from other incarnations, because it fleshed the whole thing out without bogging us down in details during the story.

To get back specifically to this volume… there’s not a huge amount to compliment that hasn’t been said before in the eight other volumes I’ve blogged about. Except endings. And it kinda feels spoilers to talk about that. Suffice it to say it’s done well, threads are tied up in a manner that makes satisfying plot sense, and although there’s an epilogue, it’s not awful. If anything, it’s successfully emotional. It lands the ending, and the after, with a real feeling of life genuinely going on. Things have changed. They’re not all still, for example, with the people they were dating at school, sending their kids off on the same train, with one of them working at the school, and everybody named after dead characters from the novels. To pull an example purely out of thin air, you understand. Nothing specific… But yeah, anyway, things have changed, life has moved on, and there’s a reason to look back and reflect and they do so… so authentically? And that’s what really made it for me.

Everything else? Art’s still great, characters still wonderful, pacing fine, story good. You know the drill. But they landed the ending, and I now have them all lined up on my shelf, so I’m happy.

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Gideon the Ninth – Tamsyn Muir

Posted on 28/12/2019 by Roseanna

81p2nqkqjolI loved it.

This is about the fourth draft of this post, trying to find some vaguely amusing way of starting it, but honestly, cutting right to it – this book is fucking phenomenal.

I kept coming across it on twitter being sold as approximately lesbian space goths (which isn’t exactly inaccurate) and… I’ll admit, I just assumed it was going to be trash. Potentially enjoyable trash, but trash nonetheless. I’m not entirely certain it’s not… a little bit trash, but it is also EXTREMELY enjoyable, so who cares really?

And fundamentally, the reason it’s so good is a really small one – Muir has done something absolutely ridiculous, taken silly premises and jokes, and has actually made it funny and a good novel at the same time. Honestly, how often does that happen? People think they’re being funny when actually they’re just being cringey. Or they are funny but at the expense of writing a functional story. I don’t generally want the “plot” to be half-arsed hand-waving as an excuse to string some jokes together. But Muir has done it, and done it well. It shouldn’t work. She’s gone quite far into silly. It should just be a mess. But it’s not! It’s extremely not, and so it’s a really enjoyable novel instead.

The magic system is, let’s be honest, bonkers. That’s one of the things that shouldn’t work. It gets no explanation really at all, despite feeling like the sort of book that’ll want to go all Brandon Sanderson and give you exacting charts of how everything fits together in six different appendices. Thankfully, it is not actually that sort of book. To quote the boyfriend being distressingly right about something, magic works well when everything it is used for feels intuitively right, rather than being some sort of logic puzzle. And for all that the magic here makes… not a huge amount of sense if you start picking it apart, none of it feels wrong. Based on the initial displays of power you see early on in the story, everything else seems to follow those constraints in ways that sit nicely for me. I wouldn’t want to try to spell out what they could and couldn’t do, but I am fairly sure if someone else did, I’d have strong feelings about whether they were right or not. And, well, it’s magic. It doesn’t have to make science-sense. But it does have to make story-sense, and Muir has managed that just fine.

She’s also really got the knack for having characters who speak in their own voices (thanks book club for raising that as a question to ask in reviews). Gideon, the protagonist, speaks extremely like herself, and you get a sense of what that self is pretty damn quickly. Likewise, the other major (and even some of the minor) characters have their own distinct ways of talking, and without being stupid parody, you get given the shape of how that will look quickly as they are each introduced. And they all speak like… actual people might speak, not characters in a book. Gideon again particularly talks like someone you might have an actual conversation with in real life. She’d be annoying as hell, don’t get me wrong, however much I like her in a book, but it’s an annoying I can map onto real life experiences and go “yep, we’ve all met someone who talks like this”. I suspect she’d be Extremely OnlineTM if she were real, in that really irritating way some people have*.

That being said… there are a lot of characters introduced quite quickly. It doesn’t quite become a scattered mess of “wait, which house number is which again?”, but it definitely threatens it, and Muir mostly pulls it off by focussing fairly closely in on a smaller number of actors. It’s one of the few books that has a list of characters in the front where I can actually see the potential need for it, which is unusual. But, as the book progresses, you get more information and it becomes easier to focus on who’s doing what, so the initial flurry of introductions becomes less of a concern.

It’s also easy to let it slide because the plot is such an absolute romp. You can just ride along and assume it’ll all make sense in the end (it does) and things will keep happening in fun and interesting ways. The pacing is really really solid, and there’s no real sense of cramming everything in at the end. Particularly some of the reveals of the past are managed well, and dropped in at precisely the best moment for them to come (even as someone who spent most of the book wanting to know what one of them was). And it is a really pacey, quick, page-turning read – it makes you want to keep going on through because you just want to know what happens – both what the next reveal is, and what happens to the characters.

Because yeah, the characters are delightful. Gideon would be annoying as heck in real life, but in a book I absolutely love her. And about five other people too. Part of what works about giving them their own voices is they become distinct so quickly, you very easily latch onto some of them and go “THIS GUY YESSS”. It’s just that sort of book. And that’s always fun.

Overall, it’s a romp. The sort of story my mother would call a ripping yarn. A ridiculous space adventure. But one that also happens to be really well written, with great dialogue, lovable characters, an interesting plot, a bafflingly enjoyable setting, and a ridiculous goth aesthetic. I loved it.

 

*”some people” here may be “me”.

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Exhalation – Ted Chiang

Posted on 16/12/2019 by Roseanna

717wlp1pjplI adored Stories of Your Life and Others. And it wasn’t just because Story of Your Life is both brilliant and perfectly designed to appeal to me (although that is true). I felt a connection or a sympathy or a fascination for several of the stories, and I can clearly remember how I felt about them at the time. I may not be able to remember the titles, but I do remember reading “the maths one” or “the smart drugs one”, and some aspects of how the stories went*. And I really remember just… how great it all was.

Unfortunately, I came in expecting exactly the same from Exhalation and it… did not land so well for me. Some of that is purely down to me, I’m sure. There’s a theme to the stories running throughout and a lot of the ways it is touched upon just… aren’t my jam. It happens. But even the ones in SoYLaO that weren’t in my wheelhouse still felt very vivid and relatable to me. I am not noted for my love of the maths, but I remember the maths story (Division by Zero, I just checked) fairly fondly. And yet somehow… Exhalation was kind of the opposite for me. Some of them were just not in my wheelhouse, but the ones that felt like they ought to have been, just didn’t quite work for me either. It felt like something was missing or… I dunno. Whatever was there that really worked before for me, wasn’t here.

My biggest issue was alas that I actively disliked the long middle story. And it was LONG. And that does colour the experience of the whole thing somewhat. I disliked one of the characters quite a lot, and felt like it dragged itself out longer than it needed to be. And I just… didn’t connect to the central concept as much as I think I needed to to get why the characters were as they were.

But honestly, my main issue was that I was getting past each story and finding it had fallen out of my head before I’d reached the end of the next one. And that’s really distressing? Like, I want there to be enough to grab onto for me to at least remember them when I finish the book – I’m not exactly a slow reader here. I’m writing this several weeks out (whoops) and honestly, the stories I can remember – the one boyfriend had to keep reminding me was there (which I actually really liked) about the Cairo shop, the long-ass middle one, and the religious archaeologist one. There were… nine stories. And upon looking that up, I am reminded of the one story I did feel like I connected with really well… but I’d forgotten it in the interim. I really liked it, now I think about it. It was really good – about how memories are malleable – and really well written and constructed, and really quite emotionally charged. But yeah, a couple of weeks out and it was entirely gone from my memory. It’s just… weird.

For a lot of them, it was… frustrating. I could see they were well written. I could recognise what was technically good about them. But it just Was Not Working for me. And I really wanted it to! I wanted the same joy I got out of SoYLaO. But no dice.

Which makes it really hard to rate. Do I knock marks off a book I think is technically great but I didn’t like (answer: yes, because it’s my blog and I can do as I please)? Do I just blame myself (also yes, actually). Do I hope he does another collection sooner rather than later and that I love it again? Absolutely.

*For some context, I’m distressingly bad at remember specifics of plots for a lot of stories, after a few months. Names and themes and feelings stick with me far better. I think this makes me a little hyper-conscious of how memorable stories are, because I already know they’re going to drift out of my brain anyway, so if they’re even worse at sticking around than usual, then what was the point of the whole endeavour?

Posted in All, Else, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Weird | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Child of the Morning – Pauline Gedge

Posted on 16/12/2019 by Roseanna

51zqa2b515hlSo I did a little quiz for the quiz league I’m involved in a while back, on the subject of historical women (for I am predictable). As a result of the discussion following it, someone mentioned a book they’d enjoyed about the life of Hatshepsut (who was one of the answers to the quiz). I do not need to be told twice about feminist historical novels, of that you can be sure.

Was it the most amazing thing in the universe? Nah. Was it an enjoyable read about a cool historical figure? Yes. Was that all I really wanted? Absolutely.

It did, however, have one fairly major downside. It really highlighted how much I’ve forgotten of all the Egyptian history stuff I’ve previously read. Not so much about dates and kings and battles, but the social history stuff… which is the part I’m more and more interested in as time goes on anyway. Which isn’t a problem on the book’s part, per se, but it means I’m a little fuzzy about the extent to which its portrayal of Egyptian daily life was accurate. Does that matter that much? Probably not. But it matters to me. And it niggled at me as I read. Which absolutely isn’t the book’s fault but, eh, sometimes your reading is plagued by issues that are nothing to do with the book. It did at least read like it was approximately accurate. Nothing felt egregious, and the author did a really good job of situating it in the setting – making you aware of the differences of life back then – without making that attention feel unnatural and forced. No one wants to read “behold, I shall now don my wig, made of the finest imported hair – from that crucial trade route to the north, source of much wealth to our country – and perfumed with the finest scents that are very particular to this time period in a way I shall now describe”. I mean. Maybe they do, it’d be kinda funny. But not for a whole book. It’s a good knack to have, because it’s what makes the difference for me for reading a historical novel – you want to really feel the history part. It’s one of the things Bright Air Black did so well, too, and it’s something I greatly appreciated every time I come across it.

That being said, it also manages the (possibly more subtly difficult thing to do right) balance of historical perspective but while understanding and writing for the modern viewpoint of the reader. Like, yes, the historical world was sexist as all fuck. I know this. I don’t want that fact whitewashed out of historical novels. But… I also don’t really want to read stuff that normalises it in a way that leaves me having to like someone (or being told I should) while they’re being a sexist shit. It’s something the Falco books don’t quite manage for me, for instance, although in that case I think the sexism is more the sexism of noir-detectives so it’s kind of a different issue. It’s a fine line to tread, because I do value the accuracy, and I genuinely don’t mind being put outside my own viewpoint and environment… it’s just… only up to a point. The ones that do this well, at least for me, tend to find a good middle ground of choosing the best available authentically historical viewpoint. Because well… history was complex. Not everyone was the worst, or even the most prevailingly common view at the time. For every sexist asshole, there was some woman deciding to become a master painter in her own right and achieving it. There’s a place for the worst stuff, and for making visible the horrible things historical minorities had to deal with, but I’m not sure that place is the protagonist to whom I’m likely to be giving my sympathy and emotional investment. Unless you do the anti-hero thing, but that comes with its own difficulties (there will always be some people who miss the memo about the “anti” part). And this doesn’t mean you don’t put any of the bad bits into the novel. You just maybe make them things other characters are doing.

And then of course, the book needs to take an agreeable tone, even if the characters don’t. I don’t know how to explain it, but you can just… tell. There are those novels where are character is behaving terribly and you just can’t tell whether that’s meant to be seen as a bad thing or not… and it’s exhausting.

Anyway, digression aside, the book manages that particular dilemma quite well. Some of it is, of course, because it’s about a female figure striving to wield male-patterned power in a sexist world. Because of her particular struggle, it’s going to aim for a tone of “women can do stuff” because… duh. Which naturally means a lot of people are sexist at her. But because it’s a story about her striving to overcome that, it works (for me).

And of course, it also works for me because characters. I remain a predictable woman. But I think Gedge managed to do a really good job of making Hatshepsut arrogant – and she is really quite arrogant – while at the same time a figure I wanted to care about. I think it’s because there is some humour in the portrayal. Even if Hatshepsut takes herself 100% seriously, which I’m not sure is true through the whole book, it feels as though the voice of the novel doesn’t. And that not all of the other characters do. Which seems to be enough to counteract the monumental ego of Hatshepsut herself, especially as she’s not the only viewpoint character. Everyone is also portrayed fairly plausibly and they feel like real people, which I always want in my reading.

Likewise, the pacing is pretty good. We focus a lot more on the earlier years of her life and reign, because the story is mostly interested in the struggle and success and downfall, not the slow aftermath of the rest of her life. And Gedge isn’t scared to skip bits, rather than let the plot drag in the less exciting bits of the story. She does so at fairly sensible points and without making a big deal of it, but with enough info to see why the skip is happening, and it means we can keep the fairly pacey style and keep wanting to turn the pages. Because let’s be honest, 200 pages of trade negotiation would be… not the best.

That all being said – and yes, it really is quite well written – really, I just like it because it’s fun and semi-feminist history. As long as everything else was basically competent, I’d probably be cool with it. I’m glad it’s better than competent, don’t get me wrong. But in this regard I’m a simple soul. Yay lady-Pharoah! That is all.

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Die Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker – Gillen, Hans, Cowles

Posted on 14/12/2019 by Roseanna

42667807._uy887_ss887_Occasionally, circumstances conspire in a good way. You might, for instance, decide that today is the day to read this graphic novel, but you’re a bit sleepy, so you’re going to do it in bed. And it’s a bit noisy outside, so you’ll put on your headphones, and since you’re doing that, may as well have some music. But can’t have music with words in it for a book – it’ll just distract you – so best be purely musical. And since the only (mostly) non-vocal music on any of your playlists is the LoTR soundtrack, it had best be that then. What could go wrong.

And then it turns out that the graphic novel you’re reading is drawing heavily on Tolkienian themes of loss and change and growing apart from the places you came from and war and how that changes people and… oh… oh god.

There was a bit in a trench while the sad lady-voice bit* was playing…

Oh god…

So yes, suffice it to say, an emotional evening was had by all involved. In a good way. But yeah, wow.

As such, my feelings on the book were somewhat… amplified. So I’m not sure the extent to which it would impact someone else reading it without the set of circumstances that meant the song choices lined up so well with the pages I was reading. I couldn’t even recreate it if I wanted to. But it made everything Very Big Mood Yes. So perhaps take my enthusiasm with a pinch of salt. I am, of course, never unnecessarily enthusiastic about something without due cause aside of from this. Obviously.

You may have guessed by now that I loved it. Kieron Gillen is great – I read all the way to the end of WicDiv so I must like his stuff at least a bit – but this is a definite step above what I’ve read before. If you’re the sort of nerd who has played any sort of tabletop, and who has any amount of emotional connection with Lord of the Rings… I can’t imagine this not resonating with you either. It really does link up to the stuff in Tolkien that feels the most deeply emotional, at least to me. The parts that feel so vividly like they’re written by a survivor of war, coming back to a world he no longer fits into, full of ghosts and sadness, no matter what good things are still left. And it leans extremely hard on that feeling, in case you were somehow expecting a gentle ride. It’s a story about that after, about the world in which you don’t quite fit, but also about how you don’t want to go back to the war either (or maybe some people do) and how somehow that means there’s nowhere you can fit anymore.

Big, big themes for a slim little volume, but somehow they do them justice.

Some of that is the art. The artist had a brilliant knack for conveying emotion through the visuals, so they didn’t need to do them in words. I got a feel for who everyone was and how they were feeling really quickly, and that always helps me feel settled into a narrative and attached, and then it carried on throughout – she did a good line in faces responding to someone else speaking.

The other thing I felt it did really well was examine how adults would feel coming back to the choices they made as teens – they have to go back and relive the characters they invented for themselves as teenagers, and who doesn’t understand how mortifying that would be? – as well as examining how the things we think of as cool in an RPG character sense (she says, with her preference for playing a barbarian) would be potentially soul destroying if we had to live them. And that’s trivially obvious. It’s not a grand revelation at all. But there’s a big gap between stating a true thing and portraying it with real sympathy and emotion in narrative form. The character choices each player made are intensely believable and in many ways very teenage (and very smug, self-satisfied, aren’t we ever so clever and different-teenage at that), but also brilliantly calibrated to absolutely Fuck Them Up in some way. And because we come into the story in some ways half way through, we watch that narrative stretching forward and backwards, we get to experience the legacy of what they did to themselves while learning what it was, and it’s all just very well played.

I’ve not actually told you what the book is about yet, have I? Whoops.

Imagine you start playing an RPG, just a normal RPG you play with your friends, but suddenly you’re trapped inside it, Jumanji-style. And then imagine you find the way out, you escape back to the real world and try to go back to living a normal life, but one of the friends who went in with you never made it back. No one believes you. No one understands the trauma you have to live with but the other people who experienced it. And then imagine you live your life, grow up, make adult decisions and grow (or don’t) past it all. And then you get pulled back in years later, and all the things you escaped before are still there, but the you that has to live it all over again is scarred and embittered, and just… not 14 anymore.

It doesn’t sound as good when I spell it out plot-wise. It doesn’t quite do it justice. It sounds… small. But it’s not. It’s a book of big emotions, big themes and a lot of talent, and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who wants to think about the sadness inherent in quest stories. The setting isn’t really the point – it’s a good way in, and a way by which I could connect to it more instantly – the point is people, and the people being shaped by their friendships, experiences and losses. All the best books, at least for me, are like this. And this absolutely is a very good book indeed.

*I could try to figure out what the track is called, but tbh you probably already know the one I mean so why bother?

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