![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
General thoughts on:
The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton
Tess of the road, by Rachel Hartman
The cruel prince by Holly Black
The Call
Children of blood and bone
Now with Dread nation by Justina Ireland
Dread nation by Justina Ireland. Zombies rise up from the battlefields of the US civil war. White people want black people to do the fighting for them. This was fantastic. I'm sure there was a lot that I was missing, having no idea of the historical setting, but the Jane's voice rang deep and true and resonant, and the worldbuilding was rich and interesting. The second half of the novel -- the plot, basically -- wasn't quite as strong, but the characters and the worldbuilding carried it through. If I didn't already have Tess of the road as book of my heart, this would be first.
The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton. I really wanted to like this one. A woman of colour on the cover! A POC author! A wide range of skin and body types all being lauded as beautiful (even if this was undercut by the characters desiring tiny waists). I commend her comparatively totally-out-there idea, and that she sells it so straight-facedly that I was in fact willing to suspend disbelief and go along with it. I also appreciated that she didn't flinch away from the potential for body horror that was evident under the lavish surface. But the rest of it – the emotional arcs, the romance, the characterisations, some of the pacing…all not quite. It was a quick, entertaining read (430 pages in four days which is super fast for me), and while I feel like books for teens should be just as good and complex as books for adults, I can't really bring myself to begrudge it its lack of more, even if I personally wanted it. (content notes for attempted sexual assault and some body horror)
Goodreads reviewers have been blasting this book for being transphobic and bury your guys and I kinda… I'm not really seeing it in the text. Yes, there's a tabloid headline about a boy transitioning to his true nature of being a girl, and I think people are jumping on it for misgendering, but I feel like people are being overly harsh. I know it's not quite analogous, but as someone who was a lesbian and who is now bisexual, I'd really, really like for there to be space for "I was a woman, and now I'm a man, or whatever, and both of those states were/are valid and real" There was also the nicest little moment that I think people missed, where the main character favourite is working her literal beauty magic on a woman, and the favourite notes the stubble growing on the woman's cheeks and offers her the magical equivalent of electrolysis, and the woman gratefully accepts.
The bury your gays trope… *makes another face* I do feel the book took too long to introduce queerness, especially as this culture was apparently post-racism. Making it post-homophobia seemed a no-brainer. But when it did introduce non-straight people, one was in a position of power. And yes, the other non-straight character is killed, but the levels of threat and terror had been ratchetted up so high by that point in the text (I was seriously impressed at how well done that was, and how genuinely tense it made me), that I was relieved only one person died, honestly.
That was…a lot of words on a book that I'm wavering about putting on my ballot at all.
The cruel prince by Holly Black. I have vague negative fandom feelings about Holly Black, in that 'I know *something* went down, but have not read deeply about the happenings. So I was interested in the excuse to read something by her. This was…not bad? But also not great. It's competently written, and I like the emotional plot beats she was aiming for, even if her emotional handling of them didn't stack up. I give her a desultory gold star for a casually bi character, but this book still suffers from an innate heterosexism that I'm only just starting to notice everywhere: One of the main character's sisters is bi. Yay! The other sister has a mysterious secret suitor in the Faerie Court, …and everyone is like "wooo, who is he?" despite the fact there are men and women in said Court. *sighs* Also there's more than a couple of "it makes no sense that X character would do that, except that the plot needed her to" moments. I really like 'enemies-to-lovers' trope, but man, 'bullies-to-lovers' Not So Much.
After finishing: Huh. That ended better than I expected, honestly. I'm half tempted to at least say, read the summary of the second book to see how things unfold. (That super doesn't sound like much, but it's way more invested than I thought I was going to be?)
Tess of the road by Rachel Hartman. I lightly bounced of Seraphina some months back, but this…this. I don't want to call it the perfect novel, because it's not, but it's MY perfect novel, and I clutch it inarticulately to my chest, while being all choked up. It's the story of healing and learning that others' views of you are not you, and figuring out who you are for yourself. It's a really brilliant example of having a religiously-misogynistic culture (or at least the POV character's culture), while also having women all over the place being powerful and influential and competent and people. (Game of Thrones, I'm looking at you) Mother Philomenia (badass nun!), and Boss Gen, and the midwife, and Dulsia (sex worker positivity!), and the side characters – men and women and others – who all have distinct little character beats that round them out into flawed-actual-people, and oh my god I want to write like this. With sixty ish pages to go I fear this is a standalone, and I want so much more than 500 pages. I know I can go back and read Seraphnia's story, but I want more of *this* dammit.
(There's some content notes for this book that, hmm. They are beautifully, sensitively handled and if I hadn't been in public I would have literally wept over one of them. They're also very clearly spottable on the text's horizon, and yet…I don’t want to 'spoil' them. Feel 100% to ask for them in comments, if you want)
The Call by Peadar O Guilin. So this isn’t technically on the ballot, but its sequel is. Also this book was both one that had vaguely on my radar for a while and was right at my fingertips, so I took the chance. Was it in any way well written? Nope. Would it deserve to be on the ballot even if it was eligible? Hell no. Do I want to read the nominated sequel? Not really. Did I love it? Was I absolutely transfixed by it? Do I feel like it’s improved my own ideas of story structure? Am I still thinking about it, days later? Oh my god, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. The Fae have cut Ireland off from the rest of the world (have perhaps taken the rest of the world, Ireland has no idea), and has methodically and randomly been Calling teenagers into Fae land for a day/3 minutes depending which side you’re experiencing it from, for torture and hunting for sport. Very few come back alive, no one survives unscathed. What that DOES to your world, your culture, your everything – gets explored not as well as it should have been, but touches on realistic enough things to be tantalising. It is a brutal horror story and a half. It also honestly reads like he’s had his second draft published, when it should have gone for several more rewrites to tighten up everything. I might try and get to The invasion if I have time to spare. I’m not expecting it to be ballot-worthy, but goddamn am I glad I read the first one.
Children of blood and bone by Tomi Adeyemi
I really wanted to like this – neat magic systems and POCs, fantastic cover etc – but it was so breathlessly overwritten, and the characters’ motivations hammered home so repetitively that by about page 140 of 500 I just felt tired. I might give it another go if I have time, given there’s been a couple of books that I’ve first bounced off and then found the mood for.
Dread nation by Justina Ireland. Zombies rise up from the battlefields of the US civil war. White people want black people to do the fighting for them. This was fantastic. I'm sure there was a lot that I was missing, having no idea of the historical setting, but the Jane's voice rang deep and true and resonant, and the worldbuilding was rich and interesting. The second half of the novel -- the plot, basically -- wasn't quite as strong, but the characters and the worldbuilding carried it through. If I didn't already have Tess of the road as book of my heart, this would be first.
The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton
Tess of the road, by Rachel Hartman
The cruel prince by Holly Black
The Call
Children of blood and bone
Now with Dread nation by Justina Ireland
Dread nation by Justina Ireland. Zombies rise up from the battlefields of the US civil war. White people want black people to do the fighting for them. This was fantastic. I'm sure there was a lot that I was missing, having no idea of the historical setting, but the Jane's voice rang deep and true and resonant, and the worldbuilding was rich and interesting. The second half of the novel -- the plot, basically -- wasn't quite as strong, but the characters and the worldbuilding carried it through. If I didn't already have Tess of the road as book of my heart, this would be first.
The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton. I really wanted to like this one. A woman of colour on the cover! A POC author! A wide range of skin and body types all being lauded as beautiful (even if this was undercut by the characters desiring tiny waists). I commend her comparatively totally-out-there idea, and that she sells it so straight-facedly that I was in fact willing to suspend disbelief and go along with it. I also appreciated that she didn't flinch away from the potential for body horror that was evident under the lavish surface. But the rest of it – the emotional arcs, the romance, the characterisations, some of the pacing…all not quite. It was a quick, entertaining read (430 pages in four days which is super fast for me), and while I feel like books for teens should be just as good and complex as books for adults, I can't really bring myself to begrudge it its lack of more, even if I personally wanted it. (content notes for attempted sexual assault and some body horror)
Goodreads reviewers have been blasting this book for being transphobic and bury your guys and I kinda… I'm not really seeing it in the text. Yes, there's a tabloid headline about a boy transitioning to his true nature of being a girl, and I think people are jumping on it for misgendering, but I feel like people are being overly harsh. I know it's not quite analogous, but as someone who was a lesbian and who is now bisexual, I'd really, really like for there to be space for "I was a woman, and now I'm a man, or whatever, and both of those states were/are valid and real" There was also the nicest little moment that I think people missed, where the main character favourite is working her literal beauty magic on a woman, and the favourite notes the stubble growing on the woman's cheeks and offers her the magical equivalent of electrolysis, and the woman gratefully accepts.
The bury your gays trope… *makes another face* I do feel the book took too long to introduce queerness, especially as this culture was apparently post-racism. Making it post-homophobia seemed a no-brainer. But when it did introduce non-straight people, one was in a position of power. And yes, the other non-straight character is killed, but the levels of threat and terror had been ratchetted up so high by that point in the text (I was seriously impressed at how well done that was, and how genuinely tense it made me), that I was relieved only one person died, honestly.
That was…a lot of words on a book that I'm wavering about putting on my ballot at all.
The cruel prince by Holly Black. I have vague negative fandom feelings about Holly Black, in that 'I know *something* went down, but have not read deeply about the happenings. So I was interested in the excuse to read something by her. This was…not bad? But also not great. It's competently written, and I like the emotional plot beats she was aiming for, even if her emotional handling of them didn't stack up. I give her a desultory gold star for a casually bi character, but this book still suffers from an innate heterosexism that I'm only just starting to notice everywhere: One of the main character's sisters is bi. Yay! The other sister has a mysterious secret suitor in the Faerie Court, …and everyone is like "wooo, who is he?" despite the fact there are men and women in said Court. *sighs* Also there's more than a couple of "it makes no sense that X character would do that, except that the plot needed her to" moments. I really like 'enemies-to-lovers' trope, but man, 'bullies-to-lovers' Not So Much.
After finishing: Huh. That ended better than I expected, honestly. I'm half tempted to at least say, read the summary of the second book to see how things unfold. (That super doesn't sound like much, but it's way more invested than I thought I was going to be?)
Tess of the road by Rachel Hartman. I lightly bounced of Seraphina some months back, but this…this. I don't want to call it the perfect novel, because it's not, but it's MY perfect novel, and I clutch it inarticulately to my chest, while being all choked up. It's the story of healing and learning that others' views of you are not you, and figuring out who you are for yourself. It's a really brilliant example of having a religiously-misogynistic culture (or at least the POV character's culture), while also having women all over the place being powerful and influential and competent and people. (Game of Thrones, I'm looking at you) Mother Philomenia (badass nun!), and Boss Gen, and the midwife, and Dulsia (sex worker positivity!), and the side characters – men and women and others – who all have distinct little character beats that round them out into flawed-actual-people, and oh my god I want to write like this. With sixty ish pages to go I fear this is a standalone, and I want so much more than 500 pages. I know I can go back and read Seraphnia's story, but I want more of *this* dammit.
(There's some content notes for this book that, hmm. They are beautifully, sensitively handled and if I hadn't been in public I would have literally wept over one of them. They're also very clearly spottable on the text's horizon, and yet…I don’t want to 'spoil' them. Feel 100% to ask for them in comments, if you want)
The Call by Peadar O Guilin. So this isn’t technically on the ballot, but its sequel is. Also this book was both one that had vaguely on my radar for a while and was right at my fingertips, so I took the chance. Was it in any way well written? Nope. Would it deserve to be on the ballot even if it was eligible? Hell no. Do I want to read the nominated sequel? Not really. Did I love it? Was I absolutely transfixed by it? Do I feel like it’s improved my own ideas of story structure? Am I still thinking about it, days later? Oh my god, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. The Fae have cut Ireland off from the rest of the world (have perhaps taken the rest of the world, Ireland has no idea), and has methodically and randomly been Calling teenagers into Fae land for a day/3 minutes depending which side you’re experiencing it from, for torture and hunting for sport. Very few come back alive, no one survives unscathed. What that DOES to your world, your culture, your everything – gets explored not as well as it should have been, but touches on realistic enough things to be tantalising. It is a brutal horror story and a half. It also honestly reads like he’s had his second draft published, when it should have gone for several more rewrites to tighten up everything. I might try and get to The invasion if I have time to spare. I’m not expecting it to be ballot-worthy, but goddamn am I glad I read the first one.
Children of blood and bone by Tomi Adeyemi
I really wanted to like this – neat magic systems and POCs, fantastic cover etc – but it was so breathlessly overwritten, and the characters’ motivations hammered home so repetitively that by about page 140 of 500 I just felt tired. I might give it another go if I have time, given there’s been a couple of books that I’ve first bounced off and then found the mood for.
Dread nation by Justina Ireland. Zombies rise up from the battlefields of the US civil war. White people want black people to do the fighting for them. This was fantastic. I'm sure there was a lot that I was missing, having no idea of the historical setting, but the Jane's voice rang deep and true and resonant, and the worldbuilding was rich and interesting. The second half of the novel -- the plot, basically -- wasn't quite as strong, but the characters and the worldbuilding carried it through. If I didn't already have Tess of the road as book of my heart, this would be first.
Tags: