Review: All Things Cease to Appear

5 stars. Wow, how brutal was this? I can't believe I went from the magic of Daevabad to All Things Cease to Appear. Guess it's true: I really do read everything I can get my hands on. And you know what? I loved it just as much. This is one of the most harshly human stories I've ever read, and also a lot of other things: a pageturner; a character study; a mystery. There's a murder, and a small town, and a marriage, and it takes those familiar ingredients and bakes something truly special. Painfully, sharply special. Haunting in every meaning of the word.

This book really sneaks up on you, and I highly, highly recommend going in blind, so I won't summarize except to say, broadly, that this book is about a young couple that moves into a house with a past in a small town. But it really is about so much more than that - grief, hope, despair, love, faith, art, belief, loyalty, and betrayal. Tragedy. Joy after tragedy. Arrogance. The hunt. Rage. Peace. And so much more.

By the time it ended, my heart was in my throat. Sometimes it's hard to turn my analytical brain off, but this book washed over me to the point of serious emotional investment. I ached for these characters and I felt connected to them - the female ones, particularly, dug under my skin and will probably live there for awhile. They made interesting, different choices, and pursued unusual paths, which lent itself to the plot but also a sense that this story is real. It feels like real life. I think I fell in love with each of them, a little. For whatever that's worth.

I really commend Elizabeth Brundage for taking a familiar skeleton of a story and painting its image in a new light. The way things unfold and the way she writes about the in-between spaces and the way she leaves nobody untouched and the way she works through darkness and light and the way things unfold ... it's absolutely brilliant. I want to read it again so I can sift through the sand more carefully; the first read was too white-knuckly, in a good way. I need to think about it some more and maybe, if I’m lucky, discover some of its secrets.

Flagging this for my best of the year list, for sure.

All Things Cease to Appear on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: The Empire of Gold (The Daevabad Trilogy #3)

5 stars. Absolutely incredible, breathtaking, gorgeous, well-written - this trilogy is an instantly classic piece of fantasy fiction that will captivate and inspire for years to come. As I mentioned in my review of book two, it's been awhile since I felt a full-on fanatic obsession for a piece of writing, and it's been so nice to feel it so deeply, gulping down a story at the risk of ignoring and forgetting everything else about my life.

First things first, I guess, which needs to be a bit of a disclosure: I'm pretty into all things Egypt, and have been since I was a kid. I read textbooks about Ancient Egypt for fun. I love trying to cook Egyptian recipes. I've watched all the National Geographic documentaries. I am fascinated by Egyptian culture and, well, blah blah blah, I know I'm not alone, or special. Egypt is fascinating. But I'm saying this because this trilogy scratched an itch for me personally, and that undoubtedly impacts my review.

All that being said, and I cannot emphasize this enough, Chakraborty's creation of a diverse historical fantasy world in this trilogy is really well-done. She respectfully incorporates - honors - a culture that is often twisted, skewed, misunderstood, and manipulated in today's modern world. I really admire the way she navigated this, threading that needle so well. In an interview, answering a question about writing outside of one's own culture experience, she said: "Is it your place? Sometimes the answer is no. We have to learn to be okay with that. If you love the history and culture enough to write about it, you have to respect the people enough to hear what they’re saying. What are you doing to lift their voices?" (Source)

I'm not the right person to weigh in on this with any sense of authority or expertise, but I learned so much from the way she wrote this story that I can't help but feel she clicked it all into place in a good way. A fair way.

Other things I'm obsessed with:

• The ending! A lot more hopeful that I was anticipating - my heart was in my throat for so many of the characters.

• The themes! As always, Chakraborty explores a lot of Big Stuff like religion, family, politics, heritage, power, and the cost of peace with an expert hand. I'll genuinely be thinking about the way she pokes around concepts like justice and free will for days.

• The characters! Characters who experience trauma and emerge totally traumatized, what a concept! Characters who are beyond comprehension yet beautiful and admirable in their own ways (Sobek ILY). Plus the room she creates for characters who are otherwise villainous.

• Nerdy stuff, like character names and structure and pacing and plotting!

• The world. Colorful and vivid and full of true history and lore. I still struggled with the various tribes and their backgrounds, but it doesn't matter. This world is so rich and it never feels too magic-y or too info-dump-y or too show-off-y (technical terms, every last one of them). I think often about how to marry a good idea with good execution, and I think many authors are (don't kill me) sort of rarely successful. There are always things to nitpick about one or the other and of course one directly impacts the other. But the narrative here felt really purposeful and beautiful at the same time.

I'm not ready to let go, but I actually do have to like, get back to work and do my job and take care of my responsibilities and stuff. Or maybe I could just start the whole thing over again. Decisions, decisions.

The Empire of Gold on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy #2)

4 stars. My never-ending quest to finish trilogies continues! And honestly, this one is so awesome. I'm really in love with these books and the way everything - the characters, the worldbuilding, the magical plot - comes together. I re-read The City of Brass so I'd be fully prepared, but I didn't expect to be so fully immersed. I'm about to dive into Empire of Gold and my biggest hope is simply that my heart survives it.

Five years after landing in Daevabad with Dara, Nahri has grown as a healer and has reluctantly embraced her status as a member of the royal family - for now. Ali is happily building a city far from his home, living at peace with his new abilities - for now. But in a city like Daevabad, full of tension among tribes, the status quo is fragile and cracking. With looming threats from abroad and within, each of the players in this game learn, unpleasantly, the enormous cost of change, and of peace.

Like the first book, this is truly a spellbinding whirlwind of beautiful colors and rich elements. The not-so-subtle exploration of themes like racism, religious persecution and inherited conflict continues, but it's still never preachy - in fact, it doubles down in its insistence that these things are as futile as they are ingrained and unavoidable, a tragic reality that each character has to learn and navigate.

I rolled my eyes at the romance in the first book, but I didn't mind it here, because it totally expands what "romance in YA/adult fantasy" can look like. (Or, I should say, what I want it to look like, which is a little less trope-y, a little less soulmate-y, and a little more malleable/non-monogamous). I docked a star instead because it's a little slow in the beginning/middle, and because for the life of me the tribe history and conflicts never clicked into place.

Regardless, these books are favorites. I think I might purchase beautiful hard copies, because I really see myself wanting to re-read. I'm fully invested and fully enamored by this world and want so much more. It's been so damn long since I felt myself in the first blushing throes of full fan obsession, but S.A. Chakraborty fucking hits it out of the park with every character, every development, every action-packed fight scene, every carefully-written line about oppression and social injustice. I can't not feel a little squeal-y, to be honest.

The Kingdom of Copper on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: Plain Bad Heroines

3 stars. Inn-turr-ess-tinggg. I'm thrown. I didn't hate this, don't worry, but something about it was, well, excruciatingly annoying to me. Between the quirky footnotes, the flashbacks, the lack of horror, the sheer wordiness of it all... plus, character access felt shallow; toe-deep, and the viewfinder felt off-kilter, like we could only see one corner of the full picture, or we could only look at it sideways.

The whole thing just didn't come together in the right way, for me. And it's very possible that it all just went over my head, too.

Story 1: Present. Three young women, two actresses and an author, are brought together to make a movie about Story 2.

Story 2: Early 1900s. Three young women die under mysterious circumstances (two stung by a swarm of yellow jackets; one ate poisonous flowers) at a school for girls in Rhode Island, and the principal must deal with the aftermath.

Our questions: did something sinister lead to their deaths? Why do strange and unusual things still happen on the school's land? How will they make a movie about its hauntings, despite its hauntings? And WTF does Mary MacLane have to do with it, other than connecting all the main characters and being kind of an original badass herself?

And also, in addition to being about all that, it's about women in love with each other and the many different colors of being queer. Which is wonderful.

But back to that sideways viewfinder. Maybe it was sideways, maybe it was foggy. I just couldn’t bring it into focus. I just couldn’t figure out what I was looking at. Carefully built momentum took me nowhere. Deep dives seemed pointless. The author led us down rabbit holes that didn't seem relevant or resolved. It's full of excellent moments, for sure, but the connective tissue just wasn't strong enough, for me. I hate to say it, because this mood board has almost everything I love on it - it's just, when I step back and look at it as a whole, it's a mess.

And back to that shallow character access. Especially in Story 1, I never really got to know the three girls. For real, deep down. The narrator (anonymous? Did I miss something?) tells - it's very tell-y - a lot about their actions and thoughts but they somehow still seemed so ... flat.

Finally, though this is marketed as horror, it doesn't really hit in a scary way. There are creepy moments, and a lot of meta-exposition on the academia of horror (which I admittedly loved), but no true frightening moments. I couldn't even really tell if the stakes were that high, honestly. And the climax proved, unfortunately, that they weren't, canceling any delicious dread I felt as the mystery unfolded.

So there it is. No regrets, truthfully, because I was absolutely picking up what it was putting down about queerness and queer history and I loved the gothic tropes and the themes. And I can't rate this any lower because it is truly impressive and ambitious and like I said above, it's possible it just went right over my head. I would LOVE for someone to convince me what I missed and what it’s all about and why I should LOVE it. But here we are. Thanks for listening, anyway.

Plain Bad Heroines on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: Survivor Song

5 stars. Well, in a world that has turned out to be pretty wishy washy, I can always depend on one thing: Paul Tremblay will stress me out. I have no idea how or why he managed to get things so right, nor why I decided to pick this up now of all times, but here we are. Survivor Song is, as expected, a brutal and tense book full of awful things happening to good people. It is full of pain and fear and inconvenient, unfortunate truths. It didn't fuck me up as much as some of his others, but yeah, it's an immersive nightmare, if you're into that sort of thing, which I am. Lol.

Dr. Ramola Sherman, already nervous about a new rabies-like virus infecting the human population in Boston, is thrown into an intense emergency situation when her pregnant friend from college, Natalie, is bitten by an infected man. The two of them realize they must navigate from an overrun hospital through an infested area to reach a safe clinic before it's too late, challenged at every turn by miscommunication, government failure, untrustworthy citizens, and Natalie's worsening condition.

Sound familiar? Yyyyyikes. But it's really good. This is probably going to come across as super presumptuous, but I think it's Tremblay's best-written book to date. It's very simple in premise and execution (sort of like an episode of The Twilight Zone or a less-darkly-comedic Creepshow), and he's lost a lot of the analogy-laden writing that weighed down previous books. It's just snappy and well-paced and very frightening. I would also say that he absolutely nails the balance between horror and heart, which is tricky and rare.

I also really admire his female characters in this one. Actually, all the characters. For such a short book, I feel like he committed a ton of time to research, not just the scientific/medical stuff, but the personalities and motivations behind the choices his characters make. You can absolutely expect the sort of grisly ending that would be inevitable in this situation, and Tremblay knows this, so he focuses a ton of effort on the journey we take to get there. And it works really, really well. By the time it hits, we care. A lot. It's really emotional.

The use of location and space in this reminded me a lot of The Stand, which puts you smack dab in the middle of Boulder, CO - street names, landmarks and all. I'm guessing the highways, hospitals and other areas featured are accurate, which makes this even more badass and wonderful. It lends yet another real life flavor to what is already a devastatingly real story.

I think we can expect that Paul Tremblay's work will continue to evolve and grow in new ways. I think we can also expect that no matter where he goes, he will always be reliable for a good, fucking good, scary story. Consider me a superfan.

Survivor Song on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (HP #1)

Feeeeeeeelings. Like many of you, I grew up with Harry. These books were read aloud to me as a young person and I revisited them many, many, many times after. I was there for the midnight releases, the casting announcements, the movie premieres, the fanfiction, the websites, the art, the wonder, the excitement, the tinkering, the raised eyebrows, the broken promises, the disappointments, and then the ultimate betrayal. The ongoing betrayal. That sounds ridiculously dramatic, but let's not be vague about it: the creator of this generation-defining series expressed narrow-minded, transphobic beliefs and then doubled down. It's a painful story and it's one that I can't really seem to look away from, because it's interesting and horrible and bruising.

I am not trans, and so I cannot even begin to understand the depths of personal and public trauma she has caused for some and continues to cause. But I still feel the need to process it ... to sort through the *gestures* big mess of it all. I really started considering a re-read when I hit the Pandemic Wall, like so many of us have in the past few weeks, under a few conditions: (1) I'll read my physical copies to avoid leaving a data footprint that could benefit her in any capacity (lol), (2) I'll read with a more critical eye and try to learn from it and (3) I'll let myself enjoy the books if it feels right. There are a lot of articles and think pieces about reconciling art with its artist (or separating it), and I'm going to lean on them if things get weird. They will.

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Reviewing would be pretty much impossible, so here are my notes:

• Almost right away - Chapter 1 - there are clues. Not too many, and not enough to make things confusing, but the level of planning JKR did is astounding.

• The tone here is so playful and clever and humorous. I know the books get darker because the wizarding world gets darker (and the characters get older), but I'm going to miss the easy, readable flow she uses in Book 1.

• The characters are distinct and arrive fully fleshed out, which I find to be rare in fiction, when every individual comes from the same mind.

• I wonder how influential the editing process was on this before it was published, and how little it influenced the later books. At some point it must've reached a point where the publishers were like, okay, just let her do her thing, which probably led to the extreme bloat toward the end of the series. I wonder what Harry Potter as a whole would've looked like had every book been packaged as neatly as this one.

• I know this resonates with everyone but reading about how a letter could arrive one day offering you a literal escape from your horrible life into a magical one is so vivid and hopeful I could almost taste it.

• Things that surprised me: there are very few spells mentioned or described. Some, but not nearly as many as I remembered or expected. Also, the early appearance of the centaurs.

• How much could have or would have been different had Dumbledore just been honest with Harry from the beginning?

• This book - the imagery, the dialogue, the faces of the characters - is so, so, so intertwined with the first movie. They are inseparable in my brain, partly because I think the first movie matches so closely what I saw in my head reading it for the first time. It's a shame movies 3-8 don't subscribe to that tone for consistency's sake.

• Ultimately, there's no denying that this gave to me and many others an incredible doorway. I really enjoyed re-reading. There's plenty of heart, soul and magic to be found in these wonderful books, despite the actions of their author.

Note: I won’t be including any links to purchase on HP-related posts.

Review: The Third Hotel

3 stars. This is a really weird book, and while I typically like weird, I am ... confused. I'm almost ashamed to admit that I Just Didn't Get It, because it checks a lot of boxes for me: ambiguous, atmospheric, with a lot of meta-writing about horror, death, and marriage.

I feel like I keep coming across a certain writing style that's hyper-deliberate in its weirdness, shooting beyond uncanny into a straight dreamworld that leaves me, personally, as a reader, too disoriented to appreciate it. Like, not thought-provoking, just thought-scrambling. I totally get that in some or many cases, that's the point. But if that's the point of The Third Hotel (and Luster, and Fates of Furies, etc.), I'm not satisfied, nor did I enjoy the experience. Sorry.

What a premise, though! The Third Hotel tracks a recently-widowed young woman as she travels to Havana, Cuba to attend a film festival in her husband's place. The narrative glides and snakes between the present and the past as she comes to terms with the truth about her marriage and the truth about her future, a mental de- and re-construction that takes place in one of the sweatiest, most interesting places on Earth. Her dead husband wavers in and out of focus as she wanders, pretends, and grieves, ending with a lot of unanswered questions and only a vague idea of what comes next.

My favorite thing about this book is the way the author explores Big Themes: sense of self, expectations vs reality, marriage, life, death, loss, loneliness. There are some whopping quotes that really resonate (“The two impulses cannot be separated. The desire to have a life and the desire to disappear from it. The world is unlivable and yet we live in it every day.”) and some fascinating exposition on the psychology behind horror films. But even that stuff is a bit lost in the jungle of Clare's very strange journey. The imagery is so strong but just too damn feverish for me. Again, sorry.

What did I miss?! Tell me! I love that this book exists even if I don’t love it directly. Laura Van Den Berg is obviously very talented and I look forward to following her as a writer. I have a feeling that, despite my rating and grumpiness about it all, this book might end up haunting me after all.

The Third Hotel on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: The Sea Queen (The Golden Wolf Saga #2)

5 stars. A very worthy sequel / trilogy bridge that took me for.ever. to read because ... well, everything. But I didn't give up and I'm so, so incredibly glad for that. This type of writing - the language of this story - is so unique and crunchy I think I'll miss it and return in the future. I mentioned this in my review of the first book, but there is true escapism here, even if it offers escape into a super brutal, ugly world full of pain and death and bloodshed.

In The Sea Queen we continue to watch the rise of Harald Fairhair, conqueror of Norway, through the eyes of his capable sworn warrior Ragnvald and his headstrong sister Svanhild. The quest for a unified land is complicated, however, by growing political and martial threats, throwing confusion and pressure onto seemingly strong alliances. It's a story both vast and vastly personal that offers a unique and emotional window into a very interesting, and very treacherous, time in Scandinavian history.

What makes this series so refreshing:

- Characters second guess themselves and change their minds all the time based on shifting circumstances and revelations. This makes their actions much more believable and grounded.

- The interconnected webs of romance and sex. This story has positive depictions of non-monogamy all over the place; women who experience desire and are direct about it; men and women who circle around each other and recognize that lust comes and goes. The different types of lust, even. Lust as power and lust as comfort and lust as distraction. The phases.

“It was pleasant, to be desired by this beautiful giant, and when they tired of each other, she would have wealth, and every freedom except taking another man to her bed.”

I don't know much about what social sex was like during Viking times, but I know a little about human nature, and this stuff (especially the stuff from Svanhild’s perspective) rang true to me - told so directly and matter-of-factly because the author's setting allows it (especially compared to, say, a contemporary setting). This isn't a romance, don't worry, even though in an interview the author expressed her interest in exploring different types of long term relationships. It's just strange sometimes what aspects of a book stand out even when it's truly not the point of the book at all.

- Impressive details, but not too many details. Irish whiskey makes an appearance, as a little treat, but it is not the point of the scene nor is it there to prove the author's ability to research and write with accuracy. The accuracy is apparent in her storytelling, not her info dumping or lack thereof.

- A badass, fierce, believable female action hero.

I believe I mentioned this in my review of The Half-Drowned King, but I think it's worth saying again that the comp titles here are a bit off. This is an epic trilogy of historical fiction but it is NOT ASOIAF, nor is it the Outlander books, nor would it be for fans of action-packed military fantasies, though I love those myself. This is for readers interested in something deeper and warmer and slower, something super immersive and thorough and focused on the intimacy and dialogue of politics. It's totally its own thing, and for that reason these stories will live in a special place in my heart for years to come.

On to the final chapter (with dread).

The Sea Queen on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: The Only Good Indians

5 stars. Absolutely incredible. A surprising, thought-provoking, heavy metal level of scary book that really sticks. I slowed down on this so I could savor it and relish the unfolding of each dynamic, captivating chapter. I wanted to chew on it respectfully; wanted to really taste the creeping dread and brutal punches. Reading it this way - carefully, instead of barreling through - was an incredible experience and I feel kind of cleansed despite the buckets and buckets of blood (good horror does this to me?).

The Only Good Indians, borrowing its title from the infamous phrase, is about four Native American men living ten years after they experienced a strange and disturbing hunting trip on forbidden land. Two of them are eventually killed under brutally violent circumstances, and the others are haunted and hunted unaware as they continue to embrace and defy their cultural identities through fresh grief and old regrets. There's so much more, but I don't want to spoil anything.

This is a story that blurs lines all over the place. It's a slasher, but it's a twisty one - the monster may not be the monster after all. It's a mystery, but not to us as readers - to the characters who are largely oblivious of what stalks them. It's a cautionary fairy tale that teaches many lessons - with an unexpected take on good and evil. It's an exploration of Native American culture - but through a unique and fascinating and terrifying lens. It captures characters that suffer that internal battle within and around and about themselves so well: "He hates being from here. He loves it, but he also hates it so much."

It's a story about tradition and choices and the urge to chafe against your core identity; the urge to defy custom and ignore the rules; the urge to be wasteful for selfish reasons; the urge to resist the reality of your own making; the urge to escape what you can't; the urge to blame everyone and anyone for your decisions knowing that deep down it's you - it's your doing - and you'll pay for it in the end. It's a story about how outrunning the past is impossible. And it's about revenge. Deep, natural, solid, earthly, instinctual, all-encompassing, bigger-than-you-and-me vengeance that is ugly and beautiful at the same time.

It's also, wonderfully, about basketball and marriage and friendship and paperbacks and masculinity and motherhood at its most ancient and primal. It's full of delicious details that lighten up some super dark themes in entertaining ways. Second person is used brilliantly in the second half to a jarring and energetic effect. Pacing, plotting, dialogue - it's all there and it's all excellent. Also, there's a really clever play on the final girl trope.

And the ending brought it home in a way that made me cry, although I don't know if I can articulate why.

Random lines that jumped out to me: "The best jokes are the jokes that have a kind of message to them. A warning." and "They stand together, their doors closing at the same time, an accident of sound that makes the boy straighten his back, like it's bad luck."

By the way, there are two things in this world that I absolutely hate: reading/seeing/hearing about animals getting hurt or killed, and feeling hot, temperature-wise. This book has a lot of both. I don't usually issue trigger warnings but I AM WARNING YOU: if you, like me, were traumatized by Where the Red Fern Grows in fourth grade and can't even think the words Bambi or The Lion King without crying, this book is not for you.

In fact, I typically dock a star automatically for UDDs (Unnecessary Dog Deaths) because I often see it as a cheap shot to play on readers' emotions. I stuck with this book, though, because horror tends to wash differently into my brain than other genres, and it was worth it in the end. Plus it was written so perfectly, and (this is not a spoiler) the animal deaths were absolutely necessary IMO.

A must-read for horror fans - and I think for everyone. I'm obsessed with this and gutted in a good way.

The Only Good Indians on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: Luster

3 stars. The hype is real, and the reviews are right: this book is a stressful, uncomfortable, unique portrait of a young Black woman trying to ... well, just trying to survive in a world designed to hold her back. It chronicles her affair with an older, married white man and the strange way she stumbles deeper and deeper into his life - tripped up by society and self-sabotage equally and at different times.

I think I should start by saying that what this book says is true. The concepts it captures are true. The depictions of racism and white supremacy and patriarchy and youth and Blackness and failure are true (and Such a Fun Age level of good). The articulations about art and sex and hair and bodies and success and capitalism are true. Part of what makes it an uncomfortable read is that even in its most unrealistic moments, it's still cringey in a real way, because it feels like the meaning snaking underneath the unreality is true.

It lost me in two ways: first, the style of writing. Probably a personal preference, but the words felt forced, like the author was trying too hard to be jarring or thunderous or impressive. The pseudo-stream of consciousness sentencing got weird at times. There are passages and quotes that absolutely sing in meaning but fail in style, and even those are strung together in a way that isn't quite successful. I think she'd be an incredible poet, by the way.

Second, the absolute strange way everyone behaved in this bizarre story. I've said before that we are all just fucking clueless, I know; we are just apes with phones and we've fucked any semblance of an advanced civilization into the ground of our dying planet, but I just cannot wrap my head around these three horrible individuals orbiting each other in horrible ways. Each of them has some sort of breakdown throughout this story, and their subsequent INSANE and unrealistic decision-making is sort of ... unaddressed.

Listen, I'm recommending this. Luster is a thought-driven, thought-provoking book that will leave you in a swirly fever dream of contemplation. We need more books like this. I'll be thinking about it for a while and would love to return to passages for study and reflection. That's only what I'd return to - certain passages and quotes that punched particularly hard; as a whole and as a narrative it didn't quite work for me. But those punches for sure left bruises that are going to linger.

Luster on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads