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Book Review: Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella
Summary:
The last thing Lexi remembers she’s a 24 year old in the year 2004 with bad teeth, a bad boyfriend, and at the bottom of the totem pole in a new job where she hasn’t been working long enough to be able to get the annual bonus. When she wakes up in hospital, though, she’s told that the year is 2007, she’s 28, the boss of her department, and married to a millionaire! She’s told she was in a car accident that gave her amnesia, and now she has to piece together just how she got to this place in her life, especially when not everything is as rosy as it seems at first. Her millionaire husband is controlling, her once best friends give her the cold shoulder, and everyone at work seems to think that she’s a bitch.
Review:
True story. I spotted this sitting on top of a neighbor’s recycling bin and snatched it up as soon as I recognized the author’s name. I was a big fan of Sophie Kinsella’s in high school, and I just couldn’t bear to see a perfectly nice condition hardcover of one of her books get recycled. I wondered if I would enjoy her contemporary romance as much now as a late 20-something as I did as a teen. I’m happy to say I certainly enjoyed this one just as much, although in a slightly different way than I used to.
I wonder how much I would have appreciated this book a few years ago. As a late-20 something myself, I laughed out loud at how the 24 year old version of me would react if she was plunked into my current life. A lot really does change in 4 years in your 20s, especially with regards to your career and your love life. The plot kind of reminded me a bit of the plot of one of my favorite romcoms 13 Going On 30. Someone who is (or perceives of themselves as) much younger and less experienced than the person whose life they are now living. How that affects them and how they react to it is really interesting. Both stories show how important actually going through the growing pains really are. You can’t just suddenly handle a more adult life; you have to grow into it.
I also appreciated that, although Lexi’s husband is drop-dead gorgeous, both she and he believe she should not sleep with him until she is comfortable with him again. She may be married to him, but she doesn’t remember who he is, and she shouldn’t do anything until she’s ready. If she ever is. Her husband is definitely controlling of her when it comes to how their household is run and how they spend money, but he is very respectful of her sexually. He doesn’t touch her unless invited to, and he stops when she says to. I was really happy to see this focus on positive, enthusiastic consent portrayed in the book.
The exploration of Lexi’s career path from lower level to high-powered boss is fascinating. Lexi is torn up that now that she’s a boss those under her think she’s a bitch. There’s a nuanced exploration of how women in power are often perceived of as bitches, even if they’re just being assertive. However, there’s also a nice exploration of how to still be true to yourself when in power. You don’t necessarily have to lead in the traditional “masculine” way if you don’t want to. This combined with the exploration of aging gave a depth to the romance that kicked it up a notch for me.
It says a lot for how much the book made me like Lexi that I was able to get past one plot point that usually spoils romances for me. However, that plot point did knock the book down from 5 to 4 stars for me.
*spoilers*
It turns out that 28 year old Lexi is cheating on her husband. 24 year old Lexi is just as horrified by this as I always am by cheating. The exploration of how she wound up cheating on him didn’t make it ok to me, but I did appreciate that 24 year old Lexi took agency and addressed the situation, rather than lingering in married but cheating land. I appreciated that Lexi was able to acknowledge her mistakes, forgive herself for them, and grow and change.
*end spoilers*
Overall, fans of contemporary romance will enjoy this fun take on the amnesia plot. The plot doesn’t just cover a romance, it also covers the growing pains of being in your 20s, the challenges women face when they become the boss, and how to learn from your mistakes.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 389 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: Rescued from a recycling bin
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
Counts For:
Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge
Book Review: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Summary:
In 1959 Nathan Price took his wife and four young daughters on a mission to the Congo to spread the Evangelical Baptist message. Nathan, abusive and stubborn, refuses to listen to anyone around him–not the chief of the village he’s living in, not their Congolese maid, not the organizers of the mission, and certainly not his wife or daughters. When the Congo’s fight for independence from Belgium arrives, Nathan refuses to return to the United States with lasting consequences on all of the Prices.
Review:
I was told by several people that as a deconvert from the Evangelical Baptist faith I was raised in, I would enjoy this secularly published take on an Evangelical mission to Africa. While I did enjoy the beginning of the book for its honest look at what missions are actually like, the character development becomes increasingly more lackluster and flat throughout the book, working in direct contrast with an increasingly complex plot and souring the whole book. Additionally, although the book avoids having a Christian slanted take to missions, it certainly does not manage to tell the neutral story I was hoping for. The author’s slant is more and more apparent as the book goes on, and it ends up being quite heavy-handed by the end.
The beginning of the book is excellent. Rather than giving Nathan the voice, all of the story telling is from the point of view of one of the women in his life whom he silences–Orleanna (his wife), Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May. It is so powerful to see him through their eyes. To see him striving so hard to maintain control over everyone and simultaneously hear from their thoughts that he can never truly control them. It’s empowering and simultaneously heartbreaking.
It’s also interesting to see how Nathan’s stubbornness and know-it-all nature prevents him from ever truly connecting to or even helping the people in the village he’s working in. He thinks his way is always the best, completely missing that he and the villagers could actually trade knowledge and information and all end up better. Because they are, in his mind, backwards and unsaved, he refuses to ever listen to them. His refusal to ever bend causes the mission to break. For instance, he insists on baptism in the river, even though the villagers are afraid to go in the river because of crocodiles. He could have made a compromise, perhaps a tub of water in the church, but he continues to insist on the river, leading the villagers to believe he is out to get their children killed by crocodiles. It’s a gentle and subtle message, unlike others in the book, that could be applied to many aspects of many lives. Be willing to listen, grow, and learn.
Once the Congo rebellion starts though, the book begins a slow slide off the rails. The voices of the women change from developing toward a well-rounded presentation of their characters to flat cardboard cut-out versions of their original selves. For instance, Rachel goes from being a femme teenager frustrated with being stuck in the jungle to a cardboard cut-out racist white supremacist. While being a white supremacist is obviously wrong, Rachel isn’t well-rounded enough to let her still be human. She is instead a monster, which is a disservice to us all. It is only by seeing how those who seem monstrous are just humans gone wrong can we learn something. The same is true of the rest of the women, although they are all taken in different directions toward different stereotypes. One loses her mental health, another becomes a scholar, etc… But they all become stereotypes rather than older versions of their well-rounded younger selves.
Similarly, although the multiple different perspectives work well for a bunch of different sets of eyes seeing the same situations play out in the same village, when the daughters grow up, the multiple perspectives become instead individual perspectives of their own individual lives with some periodic judgment from one sister to another on how she’s choosing to live her life. Instead of giving a richly varied representation of one situation, the reader instead gets a slanted viewpoint of several different situations. It again renders the story flat instead of well-rounded. I found myself thinking many times that the book would have been better if it had just ended at the end of the section that takes part in the daughters’ childhoods.
The plot and character shifts both line up with a tone shift that goes from neutrally presenting what occurs in the village to having a decided political slant. It feels as if the point goes from telling a good story to convincing the reader to feel a certain way. I think it’s interesting that this slant and the weaker writing go hand-in-hand. It’s a good reminder that if you focus on telling a good story, a message may come across on its own anyway, but don’t try to force a story to fit a message you want to tell. That hurts the story.
Overall, the beginning of the book is quite strong, featuring an interesting plot and characters but about 2/3 of the way through, it loses its strength, falling into caricature and message pushing that hurt the story as a whole. Recommended to readers who are quite interested in the beginning and wouldn’t mind skimming the end.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 546 pages – chunkster
Source: PaperBackSwap
Counts For:
Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge
Book Review: Cowboys and Aliens by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg (Graphic Novel)
Summary:
In the American Wild West, invading aliens show up, intent to colonize the planet and enslave or destroy the humans. The warring white settlers and Native Americans must put aside their own battle for control of the land and defend it from offworlders.
Review:
This was given as a gift to me, because when the movie Cowboys and Aliens came out in 2011, I was super into the idea of two of my favorite things being combined–a western and scifi. A friend gifted this to me, and it languished on my TBR Pile for years. I finally picked it up, and while I enjoyed the read and the art, I did not enjoy it as much as the movie, finding it to be too heavy-handed and obvious in its message, as well as a bit too stereotypical in how it handled its Native American characters.
The art is bright and colorful with easy-to-follow panels. The book opens with a clearly laid out parallel between the colonizing alien species and the white settlers in America. It’s clever to make a group actively colonizing another group suddenly the victim of colonizers themselves. However, the direct juxtaposition jumping back and forth between the two visually is too heavy-handed. Readers know about colonization on our own planet. Just tell the story of the aliens and let us see the white settler characters slowly realize that they’re doing the same thing to others. Instead, the readers are shown several times both the parallels between the two and one of the white settlers suddenly dramatically realizing the similarities in the situations.
The Native American characters aren’t horribly handed, however they are treated a bit too much magically for my taste. Thankfully, how they help fight the aliens mostly comes from ingenuity, not magic.
Both of those things said, the aliens in the story are diverse and interestingly drawn. Seeing Native Americans and white settlers battle the aliens with a combination of their own gear and stolen alien items was really fun to read. Just not as much fun or as well-developed of a plot as it was in the movie.
Overall, this is a quick graphic novel that would be a fun read for either hardcore fans of the movie or those interested in the basic idea but who prefer graphic novels to movies.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 112 pages – novella
Source: Gift
Counts For:
Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge
Book Review: Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
Summary:
Peyton Place appears to be a picturesque small town in New Hampshire. But over the course of the novel, the secret passions, lies, and cruelties of its various inhabitants are revealed. From a single mother lying both about her daughter’s age and being a widow to the school janitor who drinks to dull the ache of his wife’s cheating to what exactly is buried in the sheep pen in the Cross’s yard. Small town life is anything but simple and picturesque.
Review:
This book was first recommended to me on either LibraryThing or GoodReads for being similar to The Group (review), another book written in the mid 1900s featuring an ensemble cast. I wound up ultimately picking it up because I read that it was quite scandalous when it first came out and it was the inspiration behind the first successful nighttime American soap opera of the same name (source). Additionally, I grew up in Vermont but spent a lot of time in New Hampshire, since I grew up on the Vermont border with New Hampshire. I even went to high school in New Hampshire (public school, my town in Vermont was too small for a high school so bussed us out to other ones nearby). I was curious to see if any element of the book would successfully evoke New Hampshire to me. I often find that books set in New Hampshire just don’t ring true with the New Hampshire I know. What I found was a book that almost gave me chills at how well it depicted a typical New Hampshire small town, but also was nowhere near what I would in my modern mind describe as scandalous, although I can see why it was at the time.
The story explores the intersecting lives of many town folk in the 1940s and 1950s, but primarily focuses on Constance MacKenzie, her daughter Allison, and her daughter’s friend from the wrong side of the tracks, Selena Cross. Constance is a frigid woman who has tamped down her sexuality in an attempt to raise her daughter who she conceived out of wedlock while having an affair with a married man in the right way. She has gone so far as to lie about her daughter’s age and to lie about being a widow to help her daughter seem “acceptable.” Allison grows up over the course of the novel, first having typical teenage angst, then moving away to NYC to become a writer. Selena Cross suffers from a good-for-nothing stepfather, living in a shack, and living with a mother who is not all mentally there. Through their eyes and lives we see snippets of the lives of many others in the town.
Here are the things that were considered scandalous when the book was first published: rape of a stepdaughter by a stepfather (you can probably guess who), abortion (which was illegal at the time), men locking themselves in a basement to go on a bender for weeks at a time. Things that were probably also considered scandalous but to less of a degree: teenage sex, out of wedlock sex, middle school aged boy spying on a couple having sex, murder in self-defense. I had to sit here and think for a bit to remember what was possibly deemed scandalous. It mostly just seemed like a very eventful book to me, and honestly I was just a bit surprised that nothing more scandalous happened. (Apparently, Metalious originally wrote the book with having a father rape a daughter, but the publisher made her change it because America wasn’t ready yet. Oh my how times have changed. Source). The only part of the book that really bothered me at all in the way that perhaps people were once scandalized was the depicted of Constance’s relationship with her new boyfriend. Basically she is frigid and he has to get her to open up and accept her sexuality in order to be her true self. That’s a fine plot, but the way it’s done often verges on the border of “she said no but ignore it because she really means yes.” I understand in the 1950s when this was written that it was progressive to have a woman character learning to open up and embrace her sexuality, so I shouldn’t be too harsh with modern critiques. Certainly the character herself deems what occurred between her and her boyfriend as lovemaking. But I definitely don’t think this portion aged well, and it soured my enjoyment of that particular chapter, and Constance’s plot as a whole.
I found the two abortion plots to be particularly poignant and important. Even though abortion is now legal, a lot of the arguments for and against it in the book are still heard today. I found the two abortions in the book to be an important reminder of why it’s important for abortion to be legal and also why it’s important to educate about safe sex at the same time.
What really made me enjoy the book though was its depiction of small town New Hampshire life. It just rang as so very true to me, right own to the scandals. I think too often people get this idealistic picture of small town life, and that is just not the reality for people who actually live there. People in small towns are just as human as people in cities. The real difference is that it’s hard to change your reputation in a small town. Similarly, small towns are more able to be a law in and of themselves. If the people agree on something, no outsiders can make them change their tune. That can both be a blessing and a curse. If you are interested in New Hampshire, this book certainly presents it in an unvarnished way. From the scenery to the proximity of Vermont to the mills and the problems with the mills to the way the small towns block out those who aren’t from here. If what the reader is looking for is a real representation of small town New Hampshire, they should certainly look no further.
One side-note: I find the story of the author’s life and how her book was received to be quite fascinating. For instance, how it was mostly received as chick lit, in spite of the fact that if the same story had been written by a man it would have been considered serious literature. I also find how the author found the information to inspire the story, as well as how she reacted to fame to be fascinating. If you want to read more about the former, I recommend picking up this edition of the book, as it has a great foreword talking about the history of the book from a women’s studies perspective. If you’re interested in the latter, I recommend reading this article from Vanity Fair about her life.
Overall, it is easy to see how this book was scandalous in its time, although it mostly holds no shock value today. Readers interested in small town New Hampshire life with a side of multiple overlapping juicy plots will not be disappointed.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 384 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: PaperBackSwap
Counts For:
Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge
Book Review: Fated by S.G. Browne
Summary:
Fabio is not a fan of his job as Fate. He never gets to actually influence the idiotic humans in his charge (everyone off the path of Destiny). He just gets to show up at the moment of their fateful decisions. Falling in love with a human (who just so happens to be on the path of Destiny) breaks rule #1, and once you break one rule, you may as well break others…. Soon, Fabio is interfering in his charges’ fateful decisions, but just how long can he do this without causing havoc and escaping Jerry’s (God’s) notice?
Review:
I remember I first acquired this because I really enjoyed Browne’s other novel, Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament (review). Although this book uses a similar irreverent tune, it just doesn’t work out as well given the content. Add in a few writing quirks and an ending that made me simultaneously scratch my head and go ewww, this just didn’t work for me.
The first thing that bothered me about the book is a quirk Fabio (our narrator) has to describe each and every character we encounter in the following way: “The thing about [name] is, s/he is [character flaw].” It’s cutesie the first few times. By the twentieth time it’s irritating and by the thirtieth you’re kind of wondering what the heck is wrong with Fabio that he’s been alive for this many thousands of years and still can’t seem to come up with a more creative way to talk.
The book’s mythology firmly asserts that Christianity is right. Although there’s a mysterious aside about how the Greek/Roman mythological gods and goddesses did exist but stopped being important once people stopped believing in them. So, in spite of Jerry and all of his servants all asserting that Jesus is the Son of God and Christianity is right, there’s also this idea that something else once existed when people believed in it. There is also an immortal character of Karma, who we are told exists mostly because of the many people in India who believe in him. You can probably spot the problem with these co-existing ideas. If immortal ideas/people exist because of belief, why would the only ones in existence be the Christian God and Karma, currently? There are clearly other religions in the world that people currently believe in, so…….My issue isn’t with the author choosing to assert that the Christian God is the one that is true in this world (although some readers might be bothered by it). My issue is that the book simultaneously does this and says that other gods/ideas can exist with belief, but then limits these to only ancient Greek/Roman gods and goddesses and modern-day Karma. This doesn’t work within the logic of the world that the author set up. It really bugged me.
There is also the problem that the immortal characters (well, and the human ones, but let’s focus on the immortal ones) are divided up in a very gender normative way. Destiny, Lust, and Lady Luck, Secrecy, and Honesty are all women. Sloth, Gluttony, Death, Fate, Karma, oh yeah and GOD are all men. Lust is an overwrought caricature of the evil temptress woman. Honesty is basically the most feminine innocent woman you could meet. It’s the classic virgin/whore dichotomy (oh and don’t forget the Virgin Mary, who’s also obviously mentioned quite a bit). It’s not exactly better for the men, being stuck with either being a lazy slob, someone who violently kills everyone, or Fate himself. Even if the reader is personally ok with gender normativity, this collection of characters is just expected and dull. There’s nothing that really throws the reader a curveball or strikes as creative. Right down to God going by the name Jerry and having a bureaucratic office in the sky.
Then we have the human who Fabio falls in love with, who is basically the manic pixie dream girl (a female character who exists only to show up and show a depressed male character the meaning of life. Full exploration of this trope), which I’ve talked about before in other reviews (not surprisingly in books by men set in fantastical settings and that are supposed to be funny, but I digress). Just like with gender normativity, this trope is just lazy. The only motivator to the male character (who is first person and depressed and dull) is for a magical woman to show up and fix his life (often while her own gets ruined). There’s no real characterization of the female character, and frankly it undersells the male character too. This book takes it a whole step further. The spoiler paragraph below goes into more depth about the problematic treatment of women in the book.
*spoilers*
Sara, the manic pixie dream girl, shows up and Fabio falls in love with her. She falls in love with him too. Fabio reveals to her who he is. She loves him anyway. They’re very happy together. Fabio finds out that Sara is on the path of Destiny because she’s supposed to be the mother of the second Son of God. So God is going to show up and bang his girlfriend at some point. He is very upset about this. God finds out about Fabio both telling a human who he is and interfering with human fates and punishes him by both turning him mortal and wiping him from Sara’s memory. Sara believes that Fabio was a one-night stand. Fabio proceeds to stalk her, forcing her to get a restraining order, which he then violates. It’s unclear if this is supposed to be seen as romantic, exactly, but it is clear that the reader is supposed to empathize with Fabio. Sara wouldn’t really want him to stay away from her if she just understood, which is problematic because of how it mirrors the logic of many stalkers. It gets worse though. Fabio in despair throws himself off a bridge, committing suicide. He then comes to realizing that he has been reformed as the fetus inside Sara’s uterus–the result of the one-night stand between her and God. He is the second Son of God. And he’s ok with this because he at least gets to be close to Sara. So Sara doesn’t just exist purely as a prop for Fabio’s character development, she’s also the woman who is banged once and thrown away by God to be forced to bring his second Son into the world who also just so happens to be the same dude as her ex-lover she has the restraining order against. It’s just so many levels of denying women any agency or rights or treating women as anything but passive vessels to be used by men and male gods however they want that it just made my head explode with rage when I read it. Most of this what the fuckery occurs in the last couple of chapters.
*end spoilers*
This is a book whose idea I felt had promise but the directions the author chose to take it just ruined it for me. Readers who won’t be bothered by a book with logical inconsistencies, gender normative representations of immortals, and the problematic characterizations and plots for women may enjoy the book for its irreverent humor about fate and destiny. Any readers who would be bothered by those things, though, should steer clear.
If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, or using one of my referral/coupon codes. Thank you for your support!
2 out of 5 stars
Length: 352 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: PaperBackSwap
Counts For:
Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge
Reading Challenge Wrap-Up: Once Upon a Time IX
Hello my lovely readers! Once Upon a Time IX, the reading challenge I signed up for running between March 21st and June 21st focusing on reading books that fit into the categories of fantasy, folklore, fairy tales, or mythology is now over (it has been for 5 days, actually….), so it’s time to post my wrap-up!
I signed up for the level called “The Journey” reading at least one book in any of the categories named above, but I had a personal goal aiming for three books. I wound up reading a whopping NINE BOOKS. Particularly given that I used to think I didn’t like fantasy, I’m kind of blown away.
My completed reads for the challenge, in the order I read them:
- A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire, 4 stars, review
- An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire, 4 stars, review
- The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson, 4 stars, review
- Maplecroft by Cherie Priest, 4 stars, review
- Fables: Legends in Exile, Vol. 1 by Bill Willingham, 3 stars, review
- Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King, 3 stars,
not yet reviewed, review - Love in the Time of Global Warming by Lia Francesca Block, 3 stars, not yet reviewed
- Everlasting: Da Eb’Bulastin by Rasheedah Prioleau, 4 stars, not yet reviewed
- Fated by S. G. Browne, 3 stars, not yet reviewed
Unfortunately, as you can tell, I fell a bit behind actually reviewing the books during the challenge. Ah well. This just means you can expect to see more fantasy reviews coming up now through July!
Have you enjoyed the influx of fantasy on my blog? Did you participate in the challenge too?
Book Review: Maplecroft by Cherie Priest (Series, #1)
Summary:
“Lizzie Borden took an axe; gave her mother forty whacks….”
Any New Englander knows the nursery rhyme based on the true crime story of Mr. and Mrs. Borden who were murdered with an axe in 1892. In spite of being tried and acquitted for the murders, their daughter (in the case of Mrs. Borden, step-daughter), was widely believed to actually be responsible for the murders. In this book, she definitely was, but maybe not for the reasons you might think.
A darkness is trying to take over Fall River, Massachusetts, and Lizzie and her ailing sister Emma are all that might stand between the town and oblivion, with Lizzie’s parents being the first casualties in the battle.
Review:
I grew up chanting the nursery rhyme about Lizzie Borden the first half of which is quoted above (this perhaps says an awful lot about New Englanders, but I digress), and I also love tales from the Lovecraft universe, which also originated in New England. When I heard about this book that mashed up the two, I put it on my wishlist. Lo and behold, my future sister-in-law, who had never even seen my wishlist, bought it for me for Christmas last year. I thought this would be the perfect read for the fantasy challenge, and although it was a bit different than what I was expecting, I still enjoyed the mix of Lovecraft and women’s history that Priest has woven and am eagerly anticipating reading the sequel.
The story is told through a combination of first person accounts from Lizzie, Emma, and Nance, diary-style entries by their neighbor doctor, letters, police and fire reports, and first person ramblings of a professor from Miskatonic University (another Lovecraft element). Some readers may be put off by the combination of first person perspectives, but I’ve always enjoyed this style, particularly when it includes things like letters and police reports. I felt that it was one of the strengths of the book, and I also particularly enjoyed getting to see both Emma’s and Lizzie’s perspectives, as well as that of Lizzie’s lover, Nance.
The Lovecraft mash-up basically is that some sort of Dark One in the deep is out to turn everyone on the seacoast either into worshippers or victims or literally turn them into monstrous ones who live in the deep. Emma and Lizzie’s parents were among the first to begin succumbing to this infection and that is why Lizzie had to kill them. Lizzie and Emma now are conducting research, trying to figure out how to prevent the Dark One from actually rising up. This is all extremely Lovecraftian, including the fact that some of these developments don’t make a ton of sense, but things just don’t make sense in the dark fantasy world of Lovecraft, so I was ok with that. Readers new to the world of Lovecraft might be a bit more frustrated by how inexplicable most things to do with the Dark Ones and the deep are, however.
I particularly enjoyed how Priest explores how societal and cultural norms of 1890s New England affects women’s lives. Emma could be a scientist now that women are being accepted into colleges, but she chooses to instead write her scientific papers under a male pseudonym because she believes she would never garner respect otherwise. Lizzie and Nance are in love and must hide it, although Lizzie often feels why should she bother when she is already disgraced after the trial. The clashes between Lizzie and Emma regarding both her affair with Nance and the fact that Lizzie believes in trying out magical and fantastical defenses against the Dark One whereas Emma believes purely in science are interesting reading. They are two very different people who are thrust together both by virtue of being siblings and by the fact that as women in the 1890s their lives are limited.
On the other hand, in spite of liking the characters of the neighbor doctor and the Miskatonic professor and enjoying the exploration of Lizzie’s and Emma’s relationship and getting to see some of Emma’s character, I couldn’t help but feel that Lizzie didn’t get a chance to be enough in this book. Lizzie Borden is such a looming large figure in local history, even on the book cover she presents as a bad-ass in a period skirt holding a bloody axe. In contrast in the book she spends a lot of time dealing with her annoying sister. Similarly, I’m not a fan of the fact that Lizzie does very little of rescuing herself in this book, which is, I believe, if the historic Lizzie really did kill her parents, what she actually did in real life. To me Lizzie has always been a woman who said fucking enough and took an axe and dealt violently and finally with her problems. Whereas in the book, she starts off off-screen that way (we don’t actually see her kill her parents) and she sort of tapers off. Much as I enjoyed seeing her messed up relationship with Emma, I couldn’t help but feel it would have ended more powerfully if she’d said fucking enough and whacked Emma through the skull for being such an insufferable bitch and in the way all the time. This was my main issue with the book.
My second, more minor, issue is that I felt the plot takes too long to build up to actual horrifying events and/or murders. The first murders, as I mentioned before, happened off-screen. The beginning of the book then is a build-up of a lot of tension with not much actual gore or murder occurring. I should mention that I was watching “The Lizzie Borden Chronicles” on tv at the same time as I was reading this book. In that show, Lizzie kills at least one person an episode. Now, some of that gets over the top, but it does get the idea of the pacing one would expect from this type of story right. More mayhem. More murder. More danger. More often.
On a positive note, the scenes between Lizzie and Nance are beautifully done, and while I was frustrated to see Lizzie turn a bit into a lovesick fool, I was very glad it was happening with Nance. Their relationship and dynamic jumped off the page and really brightened up the book for me.
The set-up at the end of the book for the sequel is well-done, although I’m uncertain how the series can proceed forward so far removed from the actual historical event, I am excited to read it and see what happens.
Overall, this Lovecraft fantastical take on the Lizzie Borden of history and what led to the murders of her parents hits just the right note for Lovecraft fans. Readers who are new to the dark fantasy world of Lovecraft may be a bit surprised by the slow burn of the horror and how much of it winds up not making much sense, but those readers who can embrace this style of dark fantasy will enjoy it. Those looking for a bad-ass Lizzie should be aware that this Lizzie only acts when absolutely necessary and then with restraint, and they should perhaps tune into the made for tv movie Lizzie Borden Took An Ax instead. Recommended to fans of Lovecraft who are interested in getting some local history woven in to the New England settings they are familiar with from the Lovecraft universe.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 435 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: Gift
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Book Review: The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
Summary:
Imagine a world where the Black Death of the 14th century wiped out the majority of the European population, rather than one-third of it. This is the world Robinson imagines, one where Buddhism and Islam rise as the two major religions of the world (with no religion a close third). See the history of the world through the eyes of two souls who keep reincarnating in different cultures, struggling to better both themselves and their world that could easily have been ours.
Review:
I originally picked this book up because I have long held a fascination with the various religions of the world (I was actually a Religious Studies minor in undergrad). The “what if” at the center of the book seemed like a great starting place to me. Indeed, what if most of the followers of currently largest faith (Christianity, source) had died off? What things would change and what would have stayed the same? Robinson chooses to tell this tale through reincarnating souls, which sometimes gives us a lot of access to these changes but other times leaves the reader feeling like they got just a passing breath of a culture and a century.
I didn’t realize going into this that Robinson had chosen to tell this story through the eyes of the same souls reincarnating over and over again. It’s an interesting choice that I am uncertain about as it lends a sort of “this much we know” to the spiritual side of the story. We, the readers, know that the souls of people in this world definitely exist, they go to the bardo to await judgment and reincarnation. The bardo they go to appears to reflect whatever faith they had (Muslims have their own, Buddhists have their own, etc…) The idea is also put out there that each of the faiths is a different path to the same end (enlightenment). Much as I may personally believe this idea, I’m not sure how I feel about this particular story being so mythology heavy. The History BA in me very much wanted to see a more analytical power-structure play-out, which we do get some of, but not as much as we get of the how to better our souls question. I suppose what I am trying to say is that, although I was anticipating a book that was scholarly with a dash of spiritual, what I got instead was the reverse. That’s not a bad thing, and I still enjoyed it, but it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting, and I do wonder how the story may have played out differently if Robinson wasn’t so tied to the same souls over and over again.
One aspect of the same souls reincarnating that niggled at me a bit was that throughout history, no matter where they were born (or what gender or species), their names always started with the same letters. So a character whose first name in the first incarnation started with the letter K always had a name that started with the letter K. It got so I could predict who was who and, to a certain extent, how they would act in each incarnation. On the one hand, it was a cool idea, although highly unlikely someone’s name would start with the same letter throughout time and cultures and languages. On the other hand, it distracted me from the more interesting story of the different world developing with the rise of different cultures than actually appeared in our own history.
Similarly, I think there is far too much story and richness in this idea and timeline to limit it to one book. There were multiple incarnations that I really wanted to know more of. I wanted to know the whole story of these lives and this place. Instead, the reader gets a quick glimpse into one time in their lives, and then we are left jumping ahead to the bardo to find out how they died and oh here comes the next incarnation. Perhaps the point was to make the reader feel as if each life is only a blink, but the scholar in me was left wanting to know so much more about every area and life the book briefly visited. It was like getting only a small morsel of each chocolate in a box of delicious chocolates, instead of getting to savor them all over a long period of time.
All of this said, let me now discuss the parts of the book I really enjoyed (and would have liked to have seen more of). My favorite is how Robinson reimagined the Americas. The same essential problem of real history still exists for the Native Americans even with the change of the Christians mostly dying off. Mainly, they lacked easily sourced heavy metals to make higher-tech weapons and they were susceptible to all of the germs European explorers brought with them. (I learned about this in my classes in US History for my BA, but my professors told me this whole idea is also presented in the book Guns, Germs, and Steel
Robinson does a much better job painting Islam and Buddhism with a nuanced brush. Since their cultures dominate the book, this means most of the book is much more gray area, rather than presenting everything as black and white. One element that demonstrates this, is how Robinson handles Islam and women. All sides of the arguments about Islam and women are presented here. There are incarnations of the souls that are Muslim women who argue strongly that the men are misinterpreting the Quran, what Mohammed said, etc… There are of course other incarnations that say no, the extreme fundamentalism is the right interpretation. Through showing Islam through many different lenses in a world that is different from our own, Robinson demonstrates how religion is so incredibly open to interpretation, and good and bad people can shape it to their own agendas. One passage that I think demonstrates how well Robinson walks this line is a conversation some characters have about the women wearing the veil or not:
The veil has a kind of power, in certain situations. All such signs stand for other things; they are sentences spoken in matter. The hijab can say to strangers, ‘I am Islamic and in solidarity with my men, against you and all the world.’ To Islamic men it can say, ‘I will play this foolish game, this fantasy of yours, but only if in return you do everything I tell you to.’ For some men this trade, this capitulation to love, is a kind of release from the craziness of being a man. So the veil can be like putting on a magician queen’s cape…. Or it can be like putting on a slave’s collar, certainly. (page 592)
If this passage appeals to you in how it presents the various nuances and gray areas of religion and culture, then a lot of this book will appeal to you.
One final issue with the book I will note that may turn off some readers is that out of all the many incarnations, only two are in Native American bodies (and then, they are both Native Americans in North America. South America is completely left out for incarnations, although incarnations visit there). Similarly, there are no incarnations to Australia, New Zealand, Central America, or any island nation anywhere (Caribbean, Pacific Islands, United Kingdom, Iceland). There is only one incarnation where one of the souls is in an African, and that African is a slave on a Chinese slave ship who then goes to China (we thus spend very little time in Africa, just at the beginning on the slave ship). One character in an incarnation mentions that in the past she went to Africa but the reader does not see her time there. I definitely think that it’s a weakness that so many areas of the world are left out. For instance, I have zero idea what happened in Australia now that it clearly was never a penal colony of the UK (since the UK never existed). Similarly, it seems Africa would be very different with all the changes in global power, and yet the only passing mention we get of modern Africa in the later incarnations is that one of the characters visits there to fight against Female Genital Mutliation (FGM). If so much else changed, why not in Africa?
I know it may seem like I listed out a lot of issues, but it is a very long book that tackles a huge task. My review is almost as if I was reviewing an entire series in one fell swoop. Each individual part had issues, as did some of the overarching ideas, but I mostly really did enjoy reading it. It’s a fascinating thought experiment that wasn’t as well executed as it could have been, but parts of it were brilliant. I also enjoyed the feminist themes throughout. Men and women are both just souls, reincarnating into a woman is not a punishment. In fact, neither gender nor race is a punishment for previous incarnations, just species. Similarly, the more a society advances the more equal their genders and races are. There is a lot of thought given to what it means to be a woman in various areas of the world, which could easily have been passed over or not handled well.
Overall, this is a book that tackles a huge philosophical question in a fantastical way. It is a large task that probably would have been better suited to a series to fully flesh-out the world, the lives, and the nuances in both. Readers interested in spiritual questions with a tendency to view all religions as different paths to the same enlightenment and a curiosity about how the world might be different with different religions in the lead will be most suited to the book. Readers interested in a more thorough exploration of an alternate history will most likely be disappointed by the reincarnation aspect and the brief time spent in each time period and culture.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 763 pages – chunkster
Source: PaperBackSwap
Counts For:
Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge
and
Book Review: An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire (Series, #3)
Summary:
When two of Toby’s good friends’ children go missing from their own bedroom and another won’t wake up from being asleep, they call Toby in immediately to look for them. Soon the King of Cats reports that some of his kingdom’s children are missing too, and Quentin’s human girlfriend disappears as well. It quickly becomes clear that it’s time for the 100 year cycle of Blind Michael’s Hunt. Blind Michael, the Luidaeg’s brother, is incredibly powerful, and only three roads lead to his realm. Toby can only take each road once. That means she has only three chances to save the children and stop the Hunt.
Review:
I picked this book up immediately after finishing the second in the series and, oh man, it did not disappoint. This book presents an old school Brothers Grimm style blood-curdling, toes-curling fairy tale, peppered with characters we’ve already come to know and love.
Blind Michael is scary. What he does to the children is really scary. He turns the fae children into “Riders” monstrous twists on real fae features. He turns the human children into their horses for them to ride. Everything about Blind Michael and his twisted land scared the crap out of me, and I don’t scare easily. It was exactly the sort of scare I used to seek out as a child from the original Grimm Fairy Tales (the ones that are not cleaned up). This book goes a lot darker than the first two, which were already dark, and it went there in such a different way from the first two plots. The first two plots were entirely about murder, here we have someone stealing children from their beds. It’s a completely different type of scare and different sort of mystery for Toby to have to figure out.
The plot tells more than just this one mystery, though, it also brings out some information that is key to the overarching plot of the series. I really enjoyed how smoothly this was worked together, and I also must say I didn’t predict at all where it was going.
There are basically two themes in the book, one I appreciated and the other I didn’t particularly agree with. Let’s start with the one I didn’t agree with.
There’s a theme in the book that children on some level must deal with and be held responsible for the choices of their parents. Toby tries to pretend otherwise, but that doesn’t work out so well for her.
Blood will tell. I tried to pretend it wouldn’t that we could change, but blood always tells. We carry the burdens of our parents. (loc 312)
It basically reads as the idea that you can’t run away from your family or from your blood, your nature. Personally, I don’t like that frame of thought. You can leave your family of birth and not have to be held responsible for them. You are not your parents. You are your own person. You are not responsible for what your parents do after you leave home. So this theme didn’t sit well with me. Other readers who agree with this theme will obviously enjoy it more.
The other theme was one I was quite happy to see so directly addressed in an urban fantasy and that is of suicidal ideation. There are many different ways that suicidal ideation can manifest, but with Toby her symptoms are that she firmly believes her death is imminent and is planning for it, and she repeatedly throws herself into risk situations because she doesn’t care if she dies. Suicidal ideation essentially means that a person is lacking self-preservation instincts and is ok with dying. They won’t actually commit suicide but they will put themselves into dangerous situations because part of them does want to die. So they might run across a street without looking, go walking alone at 2am in a dangerous neighborhood, etc… Toby’s depression from the first two books has grown so much that she is now at this point, and people have started calling her out on it. Seeing her realize that she’s, in layman’s terms, got a death wish, is interesting and well-done. What I appreciate most about it is how directly it is addressed.
Because, dear October, you’re the most passively suicidal person I’ve ever met, and that’s saying something. You’ll never open your wrists, but you’ll run head-first into hell. You’ll have good reasons. You’ll have great reasons, even. And part of you will be praying that you won’t come out again. (loc 3876)
Overall, this entry in the series brings back the characters readers have come to love and puts them into a new mystery much more terrifying than the first two. Two strong themes in the book include nature/nurture/ties to parents and dealing with suicidal ideation. Fans of the series won’t be disappointed. This is a roller coaster ride of emotions and peril.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 368 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: Library
Previous Books in Series:
Rosemary and Rue, review
A Local Habitation, review
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Book Review: Zelde M’Tana by F. M. Busby (Series, Prequel) (Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge)
Summary:
Zelde M’Tana is one of the lost children, living away from UET influence and welfare or adults at all in gangs of violent kids. But she gets captured and sent in outerspace on a journey toward being a sex slave on a mining planet. When the ship mutinies, her chances for a future change for the better.
Review:
I picked this up because I heard it is the prequel for a black woman spaceship captain from a scifi series in the 70s. I was intrigued (who wouldn’t be by that cover) but I was ultimately disappointed by the characterization of Zelde.
This prequel is designed to be able to be read as a standalone, so that’s how I approached it. It’s not entirely clear what the problem is in this futuristic world, but it appears that an evil corporation known as the UET has taken over governing everybody and generally encourages violence and treats everyone like dirt. There are a few escaped ships and some colonies they have set up on other planets where people live freely. This prequel, then, basically tracks how Zelde comes to be escaped.
I almost stopped reading the book very early on during Zelde’s lost child years. She is a lost child who joins a gang and winds up climbing the ranks. There’s obviously a lot of violence. What I wasn’t expecting was for Zelde to be a rapist. In the context of the gang wars, when her gang overtakes another, she takes the leader of that gang and rapes him in front of everyone. (She achieves this by tying a rope around his penis and tugging on it until he gets hard). In one instance, perhaps in both, I’ve kind of tried to scrub it from my mind, she kills the man right after raping him. Now, the thing to understand is, Zelde is not ever presented as an anti-hero. She is 100% supposed to be a hero that the reader roots for. We want her to escape UET; we want her to succeed. But she’s a rapist. A hero rapist isn’t a character I can get behind, and I wouldn’t want other readers to either.
I kept reading the book because I was wondering if this would ever be addressed. If, perhaps after Zelde escapes and is able to get some education and safety she would realize what she did was wrong. But that never happens anywhere in the book. It’s really disappointing.
The second problem I have with the book, which is somewhat related, is in how it presents female sexuality. Basically, in this world, all women will have sex with other women if a man happens to not be around and convenient right when they get their urge. So, for instance, Zelde prefers men, but she’ll take a woman to pair up with if a man isn’t right handy. She also will dump her female pairing the instant there’s a hint she can get with a man. Similarly, there’s a triad relationship on the ship in which a man, Dopples, is paired with two blonde women. The women read as sisters, although it’s possible they’re not. In any case, this is one of our typical interactions with them:
She [Zelde] could never tell the two blonde women apart. The one who opened the door this time had bangs now–but so did the other, standing behind a little. Both naked, hair messed, a little sweaty and out of breath–were they having somebody else in here? no–not on Dopples; they wouldn’t dare that. Must be playing together, just by themselves. That figured–for two women, one man had to be short rations. (page 127)
It all feels like a misreading of female bisexuality. Female bisexuality isn’t a result of an appetite for sex that is just so high it can’t be satiated by just one person or that must be satiated at every opportunity. Bisexuality is not this idea that women need to have sex constantly and so will take just anyone, with a slight preference toward men. While I appreciate that a book published in 1980 includes the idea that women can be attracted to other women it reads from the perspective of a male gaze idea of female bisexuality instead of the reality. Similarly, not all women are bisexual and yet every single woman in this book seems willing to jump into bed with another woman if a man doesn’t happen to be available or in the context of a M/F/F threesome. Not all women are bisexual. Not all bisexual women prefer to pair up with men (some do, but not all). Not all bisexual women are open to the idea of a threesome. The only hint to the idea that not all women are bisexual that the book concedes to is that one character is asked at one point if she is “all for women” (page 257) as in are you a lesbian. (She is not, if you were wondering). It is just as erasing of bisexuality to operate from the assumption that all women are bisexual (but not all men) as it is to say none are. Some straight men may like the idea that women are off sleeping with each other every time their backs are turned and that of course any woman would want to participate in a M/F/F threesome given the opportunity, but that is not the reality.
One final issue I had with the book, which is a bit minor but is still annoying, is a bit of grammar. Almost every time a character says something like “would’ve” or “could’ve,” it’s spelled as “would of” or “could of.” It does this outside of times the characters speak, so it’s not an attempt at dialect.
A positive to say about the book is the plot is fast-moving and covers a lot of ground. Zelde’s life is eventful, and if a reader isn’t a fan of one phase, it will quickly change. Also, Zelde’s race is not just mentioned and then forgotten. Her existence as a black woman and what that means for her is confronted in the book in various ways. Also, Zelde rocks a natural hairstyle and gauges her ears at one point while still climbing the ranks of the ship.
Overall, this 1980 scifi book contains a fast plot and interesting future but its representation of female sexuality may be bothersome to some readers. Readers who seek to avoid scenes involving rape or being asked to identify with a rapist should avoid it. Recommended to readers of classic scifi and those interested in seeing representations of black women in literature in the 1970s and 1980s.
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2 out of 5 stars
Length: 316 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: The now-defunct SwapTree (like PaperBackSwap).
Counts For:
Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge
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Opinions of a Wolf 