Retro Review: A Darker Shade of Magic

When I started this blog, I had been posting reviews on Goodreads for about 6 months. In the interest of having all of my book writing in one place, I will post one of these old reviews every Friday. They weren't written with a blog in mind, so please forgive the lack of summary and off-the-cuff tone.

I don't know how to begin, other than to say that this book is so weirdly amazing. It's so creative, so well-written, and so entertaining. I was hooked immediately, partly because I was so excited to have found an adventure fantasy with such innovative world-building. Successful, innovative world-building! So pumped! But also because it felt kind of familiar in a traditional sort of way. I don't know how specifically it compares to the Harry Potter books, but I felt that same sort of whimsy - a sort of "anything is possible with magic (but there are rules)" - tone in the writing.

Quick summary: Kell is a smuggler/magician (smagician?) who can travel between four parallel Londons. When a job goes wrong, Kell must flee for his life and face the consequences of his defiance. Loyal friends and fierce enemies both are made in this magical adventure story.

Four Londons?! Of course I'm in. London is one of my favorite places in the entire world - how could I turn down an opportunity to read about FOUR Londons? And a magical coat? Into it. Evil twins? Always a good time. Epic magic battles between good and evil? Even better.

So, obviously, I gave this book 5 stars. It just felt wrong to give it anything less. But to me, 5 stars doesn't always = perfect. Kell and Lila could've used less predictable character development. The writing could've sounded less ... academic ... in places. It was clear that both the beginning and the end had been fully formed prior to fingers hitting the keyboard, but the middle felt a bit contrived. And speaking of the ending, it didn't give me that BOOM, THE MIC DROPPED, ALSO THE BEAT DROPPED, EVERYTHING DROPPED AND I FEEL SO SATISFIED feeling.

But that's a lot to ask. That's a lot to expect from a book. I can easily overlook all those things considering the fascinating magical concepts and the clever dialogue. I will be so happy to sink my teeth into another adventure in this world.

Seriously, it had me at more than one London.

A Darker Shade of Magic on: Amazon | Goodreads

Retro Review: Station Eleven

When I started this blog, I had been posting reviews on Goodreads for about 6 months. In the interest of having all of my book writing in one place, I will post one of these old reviews every Friday. They weren't written with a blog in mind, so please forgive the lack of summary and off-the-cuff tone.

5 stars. Whenever I think about this book, it gives me this ... warm, chocolatey feeling. It's rich and deep and full of little insights that compliment the sweeping themes. Highly recommend. It depicts the life and death of a famous Hollywood actor and how those who knew him - who connected with him in some way - survive (not just survive, live) after a virus kills most of humanity.

It's certainly not a traditional apocalypse novel, but how exactly is an apocalypse supposed to go?

Among the many lessons in this book, I think my favorite is this: we are ultimately in charge of our own actions and choices, but it's okay to make mistakes, because wonderful, brilliant, artistic things exist in the world, like Shakespeare and comic books and concertos.

Yes, this book is definitely a testament to the fine arts. It claims that even in a world in which humans must prioritize survival over everything else, they will still create and appreciate creativity.

It's full of extremes: the extreme darkness and extreme insanity one would expect in the midst of an apocalypse, but there is also extreme love. I had no idea where it was headed - tragedy? Romance? Tragic romance? But (just like many of Shakespeare's plays, for example), it transcended genre and offered many deep insights without leaning on cliches.

Definitely one of my favorite reads last year.

Station Eleven on: Amazon | Goodreads

Review: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

5 stars. I can't get enough. I watched the documentary, I consumed the articles, I listened to the podcast - and now I've read the book. I couldn't put it down. This is by far the most comprehensive, thorough, insanely compelling account of what went down at Theranos and I'm tempted to start over and read it again. I squinted, I gasped, I chuckled, and I could not poker face away my expression of disbelief while reading on the train. I was not prepared for the frankly UNBELIEVABLE stranger than fiction details here. 

THIS IS AN ASTOUNDING STORY. THIS IS A MUST-READ. 

Who IS Elizabeth Holmes? Through John Carreyrou's impressive piece of investigative writing, we can indulge our fascination with her mystery. Using dry, practical writing to channel the voices of those involved, he pieces together anecdotes from her upbringing, her years at Stanford, her early days as a notably female entrepreneur and CEO, her stubborn rise to the top and her dramatic fall to the ground. He chips away at her quirky appearance - physical and otherwise - in an attempt to reconcile the trailblazer with the crime. 

And it's stunning. And it's, awesomely, not just about her.

Here we get a detailed account of Theranos' early days: its attractive mission, the early concerns and the relentless ambition. We meet the Board and the lab techs and the investors and the partners and we learn the ins and outs of lab testing technology. We learn what's possible and what's not possible and we watch open-mouthed as ignorance, denial and fear usurp rational thinking. We get to know the heroes in this story and the man who put pen to paper to make things right.

It's really a story about us. A very human story about ambition, greed, fame, fear, and FOMO. We should absolutely look at this story as a lesson, or as a collection of lessons: fill your Board with EXPERTS. Do your research. Admit your mistakes. Don't manage with intimidation - a "culture of fear" will absolutely backfire. Check your fucking ego. DON'T ENDANGER LIVES. And also oh my fucking god DON'T LIE. But as a whole it's also a heartening reminder, at least in my opinion, that journalism still works, in a sense, for the people.

I hope this comes across as fair, but it's encouraging to know that somewhere out there, ethics still matter. Even in a country that elected a sexual predator to its highest office ... rich, selfish people can still face consequences for their actions. Justice exists somewhere thanks to the lab techs and the interns and the legal underdogs. Recognizing that this story is layered and complicated, and that the case is ongoing, of course, I'll admit that seeing Theranos go down was sickeningly satisfying. Elizabeth, Sunny: you will be remembered as fraudulent fools. 

I want to go into the writing, too: it often crossed my mind, while reading, that pulling this together into an accessible narrative must've felt insurmountable at times. John Carreyrou deftly weaves together thousands of tangled, concurrent threads - including a lot of technical, scientific, medical and legal jargon plus some stuff about mechanical engineering - into a powerful pageturner. He never comes across as anything but dedicated to the truth and, maybe in some places, incredulous along with the rest of us.

I will obsessively follow this frightening story until it concludes. It's just interesting. And in the meantime, in-between the frantic Googling, I will re-read this book. I will highlight excessively and send passages to friends and family. Hats off to you, Carreyrou, for taking an incredible story and writing it well. Bad Blood is my favorite read of 2019, so far.

Bad Blood on: Amazon | Goodreads

Review: What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal]

2019 CHALLENGE: 1 RE-READ PER MONTH 03 / 12

5 stars. I LOVE THIS BOOK. This was my third re-read and I couldn't put it down. It always sends tingles down my spine in the best way. Smart, accessible, darkly funny.

It essentially tells the story of a student-teacher affair through the eyes of an abhorrent, deeply unreliable narrator. Barbara Covett is her name, Covett being a clever twist on her voyeuristic, overwhelming desire to ... control, be noticed by, be consumed by, be desired by the target of her obsession. She is an arrogant, pretentious stalker who happens to fixate on the lovely and naive Sheba Hart, a new art teacher at her school. When Sheba embarks on a dangerous and elicit affair with a student, Barbara utilizes the situation to her advantage until everything explodes in a disastrous and life-altering climax.

I just LOVE THIS BOOK. It checks all the boxes for me: unreliable narrator, snappy British writing, scandalous details about a tantalizing affair, deep exploration of the female identity, comprehensive exploration of the female identify including how foolhardy and clueless and selfish and competitive women can be, repressed homosexuality, fierce and bold emphasis on appearance versus reality, crisp, page-turning prose, the list goes on. 

And Barbara, oh Barbara, what a beautiful character. So fucking critical of everyone. She's so transparent it makes me laugh, out loud. How often do you suspect that someone is a creepy hypocrite and get an unlimited peek behind the curtain to confirm? Constantly accusing others of self-deception and playing the victim and she's the worst offender. Nobody - nobody - is safe from her zingers. Actually, I tend to see a little bit of Barbara in all of us, mentally putting others down, reading and re-reading and over-analyzing and judging other people. We all take a bit of comfort building our own illusions and living in them.

(Pay close attention, because there are other little lessons like that embedded in these pages. Lessons about marriage and monogamy and children and friendship and female friendship and aging and sex.) 

I think part of the brilliance, too, is that Barbara rather honestly depicts how people react to her, and does so indignantly. Can you believe he said that? Can you believe he treated me in such a manner? As though outrage is the only acceptable reaction. Ironically, by depicting these interactions so honestly we are able to see the truth - that she's actually awful. We see this through her attempts to obscure it, through her lack of self-awareness.

I could go on and on and on. The movie adaptation is also fantastic if you're interested in a less darkly humorous version of the story. Truth be told I can't picture anyone but Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench in the roles of Sheba and Barbara, even if I try. This is just a truly amazing story - an incredible character study and a genius piece of writing with a sick ending. I can't wait to re-read it again.

Clever and nasty is what this book is. Clever and nasty.

What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal] on: Amazon | Goodreads

Review: The Priory of the Orange Tree

5 stars. WELL THAT WAS A VERY TALL MOUNTAIN. I climbed The Priory of the Orange Tree and survived! Apologies to all the other books rotting away on my Kindle, had to take a little break from my two-books-a-week pace to tackle this. No regrets.

First things first - I enjoyed but did not love The Bone Season, and REALLY disliked its sequel, so I went into this with low expectations. Samantha Shannon seems like a talented, intelligent, delightful person, but I've reacted negatively to her writing style in the past (more on that later). I'm happy to say that her ability has grown and I give this, with no hesitation, a full five stars.

The book is long and there are a lot of characters, but the premise itself is fairly simple: a group of kingdoms (countries?) must prepare for the destructive awakening of an evil dragon. Rules must be cast aside, myths must be dusted off, and enemies must join together (etc. etc.) to ward off this threat and maintain the state of the world.

It sounds kind of cliche, maybe even a little too casual, but I promise it's very engaging. We have dragons, sorcery, secret societies, alchemy, pirates, monsters, and more. It's a good example of complex but accessible worldbuilding - accessibility being my #1 criteria for fantasy. I could actually remember where we left off with characters from three chapters ago, I didn't encounter impossible vocabulary terms, and I didn't have trouble grasping the intricate cultural details. So many authors try to show off their worlds, and Shannon isn't one of them. Mostly.

In fact, I can see this appealing to a huge audience - even those who aren't drawn to fantasy. The feminism is bright neon, and the central love story is queer as queer can be. It's a satisfying girl power book. The characters are easy to root for and the action sequences are really compelling. It isn't juvenile, in my opinion, as some have implied, although it doesn't get very nasty (I would've loved chapters from the POV of a [true] villain). It's similar to a TV show in which characters experience long arcs and slowly congregate towards each other, spiraling around the central threat.

Okay, now that I write this, maybe it is a little juvenile. There are a lot of blatant “lessons” about acceptance, tolerance and friendship (although these days it’s sadly necessary to hit people over the head with stuff). And at times I felt it was maybe even a little TOO simple. Shannon created an old and complex map here, complete with mythology and lore and traditions and religions and everything in-between, but it felt like the window was small, like everything important operated among a small circle of folks. Like I was reading about a place the size of Ohio, instead of the size of the world.

And it's a slow burn, for sure. It's enormous. The prose teeters on the edge of purple for me - something that was really irritating in The Mime Order (if she "crowned her bread with butter" one more time...) but appeared toned down in this book. Still, the descriptions of the food, plus sentences like "Its paths were honeyed by the sun, and the roses that trimmed its lawns held a soft blush" and "Dawn cracked like a heron's egg over Seiiki. Pale light prowled into the room" were jarring for me, and eye-rolly. The sex scenes were flowery to a fault. That might be a personal preference, though.

ALL THAT being said, I can’t give this anything but five stars. I'm probably just nitpicking because I spent SO MUCH TIME with this thing. It's clear that so. much. thought. and care and deliberation went into this book - it's an incredible accomplishment and deserves all the praise. It's a very long, very detailed collection of fairy tales, woven together in a beautiful tapestry. It's an epic adventure that WILL find it's place on the classics shelf. I can't wait to see the inevitable adaptation.

The Priory of the Orange Tree on: Amazon | Goodreads

Retro Review: The Goblin Emperor

When I started this blog, I had been posting reviews on Goodreads for about 6 months. In the interest of having all of my book writing in one place, I will post one of these old reviews every Friday. They weren't written with a blog in mind, so please forgive the lack of summary and off-the-cuff tone.

5 stars. In this quietly epic political fantasy, an unprepared half-goblin named Maia inherits the throne as the rightful heir to his father's kingdom. Thrown into a world of political intrigue, Maia struggles to evaluate his court, thwart assassination attempts, and learn who to trust.

So, I really liked this. I liked the writing, the characters, the setting (as envisioned by my imagination, I guess), and the plot. It was refreshing to read from the perspective of a personality that is complex but reliable. By reliable, I mean reliably good. Is Maia perfect? Absolutely not. Does he make mistakes? Frequently. But ultimately, he is a strong, admirable hero who listens to his instincts and does not succumb to temptation or corruption. So many times I open a book and cringe at the actions of the protagonist - which isn't a bad thing, because that technique keeps things interesting and is there anything better than an antihero? - but this book provided the break from epic fantasy darkness that I didn't know I needed.

I truly admire successful world-building, as indicated in my reading interests and habits. Sometimes I get frustrated, though, when authors get too caught up in the building - and essentially neglect the storytelling. Yes, it's impressive that you constructed a society, developed a language, and thought through so many details. You know what's even more impressive? Effectively including those details in a narrative. This book just barely achieved that balance (just barely), and while at times the language and naming system was confusing, the point of the story came across strong.

It didn't rip me apart from the inside. I wasn't beside myself with anxiety for the characters. I wasn't totally moved. But I was absolutely captivated. This little story is CREATIVE, gripping, fun, well-written, and includes tremendously important themes to consider in today's age of social unrest. There's something for everyone and I highly recommend.

The Goblin Emperor on: Amazon | Goodreads

Review: Mrs. Caliban

5 stars. This was so great. Short and easy but strange, and very loud, and layered. I'm not even sure where to start, reviewing a book in which a housewife has an affair with a ... frogman ... is there a term that sounds less derogatory? A frog-like creature named Larry. That's slightly better, but no less surreal.

Mrs. Caliban is about an unsatisfied housewife named Dorothy who, while cooking supper for her husband, encounters an amphibian creature recently escaped from a scientific Institute. Instead of recoiling in horror, calling the police, or notifying her husband, she hands him food. 

And they become friends, then lovers. Larry, as the handsome creature is named, is wanted for the murders of his captors, so they must stay hidden, but Dorothy finds herself, perhaps for the first time in her life, enormously fulfilled.

For one thing, Larry disrupts her dull and quietly frustrating marriage to an unfaithful businessman. He shows interest in her, values her knowledge and opinions, even helps out with the housework. He also comes from another world, a world in which everyone is the same, a world that isn't complicated by human tendencies and instincts. He struggles to comprehend the concepts of jealousy, grief and status. More specifically, he offers her a respite from the misogyny that has blanketed her life. When compared with her husband, yeah, Larry's kind of an obvious choice.

More broadly, Larry is like a child, asking "why?" about everything. This technique is successful in the fact that it made me, as a reader, sit back and go, "wait a minute, YEAH! why?" There are some things in human society - habits, social constructs, values - that truly make no sense whatsoever. And things never change. I can’t wait to read it again so I can unpack all the subtle lessons.

I particularly enjoyed the depiction of Dorothy's friendship with Estelle. It felt very natural to me, and funny. It's a funny book, with a few really serious zingers:

“Why do you call him a monster?”
“Well, an eight-foot tall green gorilla with web feet and bug eyes—what would you call him? A well-developed frog? Not exactly an Ivy-league type, anyway.’”
“I’ve met plenty of Ivy-leaguers I’d call monsters.” 

I know there are theories that Larry's not real, and only exists as a figment of Dorothy's imagination. Maybe. I don't really care. The book is casual and matter-of-fact but sharp, sort of like a trippy episode of Mad Men. Dorothy's ability to roll with it, I guess, is refreshing. She doesn't really question herself. I liked that. It's a playful and thought-provoking exploration of being female. A must-read.

And yeah, she has sex with the frogman. I DON’T KNOW, HONESTLY, it wasn’t that weird. WHAT?!

Mrs. Caliban on: Amazon | Goodreads

Review: The Virgin Suicides

2019 CHALLENGE: 1 YOU HAVEN'T READ THAT YET?! PER MONTH 02 / 12

5 stars. No surprises here. I love the movie, I loved reading Middlesex, and thematically this checks all the boxes for me. I was struck, however, by a couple of things: first, the uniqueness of the narrative voice. First person plural is rare, successful first person plural is unheard of. To Eugenides’ credit, it really works, and it was refreshing to fall into a sort of collective, shared headspace. I fell in love with the boys who fell in love with the Lisbon sisters; their quiet and honest sense of obsession and horror is totally unselfconscious.

Second, the playful and subtle way Eugenides illustrates how incapable people are at handling grief. In examining so closely the reaction to the girls’ suicides (not a spoiler!), we see people lose all sense of self-awareness. An entire community flounders and stumbles around in fear and curiosity and humor. We see an astounding lack of sensitivity from neighbors, “friends,” acquaintances. There is painfully misplaced judgment and blame. We see clumsy attempts to heal and help. The only people who truly try to understand are the narrators - and they don’t really get there. This felt very real.

Third, I thought this book would examine more deeply what it means to be female. I expected the point would be that the girls’ femaleness would inform their deaths, not necessarily the other way around. That’s not a critique, just an observation. Aside from Cecelia’s perfect explanation to her doctor, this was more about youth and tragedy than female youth and female tragedy. Being desired, desiring others, desiring more … all explored with a superficial eye. But it’s not just about the girls. It’s about the boys.

It’s about the boys’ lust and their coming-of-age in middle class suburbia; their memories and their shared reminiscence of an impactful event that changed their perspective forever. It’s about the loss of innocence and an attempt to grapple with something that simply cannot be explained. It’s about adults not having all the answers. It’s about seeing another person through a fog - or a lens - or a telescope of your own making, of your own perceptions. Or perhaps through a coating of dusk, muck, grass, smog, bugs.

I thought this would annoy me - the prevalence of the male gaze. But the girls do have agency. They’re awkward, strange, nerdy, mistake-making teenage girls and the boys (the men) later recognize this. Perhaps we would be more forgiving of girls if we remembered that. They’re not perfect, mythical, beautiful, ethereal creatures too special for this world. They’re just girls.

This was a satisfying read in the sense that I knew I would love it. But it’s not a happy book. Also …

Otter insulation? Otter insulation? EW.

The Virgin Suicides on: Amazon | Goodreads

Retro Review: It

When I started this blog, I had been posting reviews on Goodreads for about 6 months. In the interest of having all of my book writing in one place, I will post one of these old reviews every Friday. They weren't written with a blog in mind, so please forgive the lack of summary and off-the-cuff tone.

5 stars. This book is a triumph. It tells such a gargantuan, important story. Stephen King has a gift, and I'm so impressed. I have so many observations.

First of all - this story is so, so sad. Heartbreaking. I'm used to horror books and movies killing off characters I barely know or care about; usually they are stupid, ignorant, boring, or all of the above. Getting to know the victims so intimately - their backgrounds, their thoughts - made their deaths feel like punches to the gut. Don't get me wrong, this technique made the story a lot scarier, and I admire how twisted Stephen King is. And I like to be scared. But following an innocent child to his death in the rain was really painful!

It's sad in other ways, too. King illustrates what you might call the gradual tragedy of growing up. He's obvious about it, and it's so accurate it's agonizing to read. We all experience the transition from childhood to adulthood, right? It's universal. And it's often described as gaining something - independence, awareness, knowledge, experience. King choose to focus on what we lose - youth, innocence, a sense of immortality, a sense that we can trust the world, the deep connections built with friends in imaginary worlds. He's so crazy good at capturing childhood and adolescence it was a little agonizing to read. I felt a pit in my stomach and epic amounts of nostalgia.

Secondly - the details are excessive. That's neither here nor there, I guess, not good or bad, but excessive is the only word I can use. I love that King writes so conversationally, and fills his prose with references to pop culture and businesses and brands and everyday observations. It's part of what makes him so unique, and what makes his books so ... full to the brim.

The excess feels extra appropriate in some places, especially when he describes the depth of fear, or writes from the perspective of a young child. But it's a little distracting at times. There are diatribes peppered with parenthetical references. There are experimental attempts to document rapid-fire thoughts and observations. That's his style, I totally get it. But it felt a little laborious in this particular book.

Third - I thought this book was going to be about, you know, a clown.

It's not. This book has every scary thing you could ever imagine tucked between its pages. Yes, there's a clown. There's also a werewolf, a mummy, a leper, a crawling eye, Frankenstein, moving photographs, ghosts, giant birds, epic amounts of sewage, and more. And even scarier - psycopathy, bullying, violence, child molestation, domestic abuse, unusual sex, addiction, and more. A lot more. You've been warned.

Despite that list, I didn't think It was scary, at first, actually at all. But then one morning I was going downstairs to get breakfast, in the dark, and I found myself thinking about what it would be like find a head in my fridge and ... yeah, I got a little jumpy. It earns points for that. I'm not even sure, though, that I'd classify it as a horror book. It's a dramatic tragedy with a, well, with a happy ending, I guess...

I wish I could better describe my impressions of this book. I used the phrase "full to the brim" above and I can't help but think that's a good description. It's just full. Full of thoughts and ideas and characters and feelings and monsters and sadness and children and adults and evil places.

It's unusual, for sure. It's trippy and weird, although it's easier to swallow if you don't question it. It's an incredible piece of writing. That's what's so weird/amazing about Stephen King - you start reading and you're like, wtf am I reading? And then you LOVE IT. And then you close the book and you're like, wtf did I just read?

It on: Amazon | Goodreads

Retro Review: Sharp Objects

When I started this blog, I had been posting reviews on Goodreads for about 6 months. In the interest of having all of my book writing in one place, I will post one of these old reviews every Friday. They weren't written with a blog in mind, so please forgive the lack of summary and off-the-cuff tone.

5 stars. Here's a summary, for those of you who somehow haven't encountered one yet: Camille Preaker, fresh out of a mental institution, reluctantly returns to her hometown on a work assignment. Wind Gap, Missouri is reeling from the murders of two young girls, and Camille is told to write a story on the deaths for her small Chicago newspaper. Unfortunately, she has a horrible past and a horrible relationship with her family (specifically, her mother). Still grieving the death of her sister from years ago, Camille tries to gather the facts for her story while unintentionally unearthing the darkness from her childhood.

I loved Sharp Objects, but warning: this is not a feel-good book. I know it's cliche to say, but Gillian Flynn is a super gutsy writer and that comes through significantly in this narrative. She features characters that hate themselves and hate everyone around them (and somehow don't feel like antagonists - they feel very human). Camille, in this novel, is incredibly superficial and harshly critical of others - she zeroes in on every potentially unflattering characteristic of those she encounters and highlights them in grossly detailed ways.

This is also a bit of a Gillian Flynn trademark. The gross details. I remember her describing vomited spaghetti in Dark Places - the words she used left quite an impression (warning: there is a lot of vomit in Sharp Objects, too). Then again, seeing vomited spaghetti would likely leave an impression if I had seen it with my own eyes.

So maybe that's one of her strengths - her ability to realistically describe what we pay attention to. When someone at the table gets spinach in their teeth, it's all anyone can think about. Basically, Gillian Flynn has a knack for pointing it out. And describing it in the most disgusting way possible. And somehow making the spinach-wearer seem hateful even though the spinach-wearer isn't technically at fault. I just love her grotesque style.

I also loved the story. I figured out what was going on almost immediately, but that didn't take away from the experience at all. I found myself reading and rushing and reading and rushing because I wanted confirmation so badly.

Look, this book is disturbing. It is dark, especially in its depiction of women as villains and as victims. I may return to expand on how upon reading Sharp Objects,I felt as though a piece clicked into place in the puzzle of what it means to be a woman. But for now, I'll just say that I loved every word. A home run.

Sharp Objects on: Amazon | Goodreads