The Forest and the Tower

I started Naomi Novik's Temeraire series with a bang but then lost steam somewhere around the third book and never got back into it.  So I admit I was not all that excited about about her new stand-alone novel, Uprooted.  But the book got rave reviews from people I trust, so I thought I should give it a go.

Of course, the large hardcover edition came into the library just before I was off on a trip to the other side of the world.  It also came in at the exact same time as another large hardcover fantasy novel I wanted to read.  After some serious agonizing, I chose to take Uprooted with me on my trip and leave the other book behind.  And, pretty much as soon as I read the first page, I was sure I had made the right decision.

To digress for a moment, one of the reasons I get a little bit annoyed by all the love and adulation that Game of Thrones has inspired from the HBO series is that I think of Game of Thrones as a fantasy throwback.  Maybe it was of the moment when the series first started being written about 20 years ago, but now, it just feels a bit dated and outmoded to me.  The fantasy genre has evolved past the massive doorstoppers, series of 10 books each, swords and sorcery and all the rest.  I'm sure those types of books are still being written and enjoyed, but I love that the genre has expanded to include so much else, too.  And so while I really enjoyed Game of Thrones when I first started the series, I have no real desire to continue with it.  I prefer the way fantasy is now.

And that's why I think Uprooted really works for me.  While Uprooted is very firmly rooted in traditional fantasy and folk tales, it is also very much a modern novel.  The book stands on its own without two more books to follow, features a gloriously strong heroine, focuses on friendship and caring for others, and there is no objectification of women (or men).  Hooray!

My favorite thing about Uprooted is one of its key themes, the push and pull between caring for individuals and caring for populations.  How important is it to save one person when an entire group of people is at risk?  Alternatively, how easy is it to lose empathy for others if you never consider them as individuals?  I loved the way Novik explored this with Agnieska and the wizards.  Agnieska is deeply rooted to her home, her family, and the people she grew up with.  She loves them all and knows them.  In contrast, the wizards, all of whom have lived far longer than her and seen everyone they care about come and go, seem to care very little for individuals.  They care more for symbols and countries and larger beliefs.  Both beliefs make sense, and I really appreciated the way both sides played out throughout the novel.

My other favorite thing about this book was the friendship between Agnieska and her friend, Kasia.  Some readers are apparently disappointed that Agnieska and Kasia's relationship did not become a romance.  I was not disappointed by that at all; I love when authors give equal footing to friendship as they do to romance.  Friendship can be so hard to write well because it develops deeply over time.  Novik took a friendship that had existed for both girls' entire lives, and she brought so much honesty and trust and forgiveness to it.  I loved everything about how this friendship was brought to life.  It was wonderful.

There is a romance in this book, but it does not take center stage.  While I found it believable in some ways, I also don't think the male character was developed well enough for it to capture my heart or imagination.  That said, I loved the way Agnieska acted in the romance.  She never considered herself unworthy, she never considered them unequal, and even when it seemed like maybe things wouldn't work out, she went on with her life doing good things for many people.  It was excellent.

This book got me through several nights of jet lag (or perhaps exacerbated the jet lag since I was totally open to reading it at all hours of night).  I think it was a little long at the end, but other than that, it was lovely.  Exactly the sort of fantasy novel that I love; I can't wait to purchase a copy of the book for myself.  And while I know I said I'm so thrilled that this is a stand-alone novel, I also would love to jump back into this world and spend more time there.

A darker, more ominous Paris

I was very excited to read Aliette de Bodard's The House of Shattered Wings.  I enjoyed de Bodard's short stories; she writes science fiction with a feminist, Vietnamese perspective that I love.  I was excited to see what she would do with a fantasy novel set in Paris some time after the end of an alternate version of World War I.

The House of Shattered Wings focuses mostly on the inhabitants of House Silverspires, a group of fallen angels (Fallen) and humans (Mortals) that live and work together.  The house's power comes from its founder, Morningstar (Lucifer), who set great wards and shields over it before he disappeared 20 years ago.  Now, House Silverspires is under attack by an unknown force, and the other houses in Paris are more than willing to take advantage of any weakness.

This novel is both a fantasy and a mystery; the characters spend much of the time trying to understand what is threatening Silverspires, even as they wield magic and deal with the politics that are mainstays of any fantasy novel.  I like this combination a lot as it forces readers and characters to focus on motivations and there's less about the procedure and run of events.

There is a lot going on here - possibly too much for me.  I liked that de Bodard just dropped us into her world and gave us very few footholds to understand the background or history of her setting.  She clearly knows much more about the Paris she created than she chooses to share with readers.  I love when authors do that!  But this world was, for whatever reason, very complicated for me, and I often became confused.  For example, there are both Fallen and Mortals in the book, but I could not really keep track of which characters were Fallen and which were not.  And then it seemed like humans could wield magic, too, so I was confused by that, since at other times, I thought it seemed like humans had no intrinsic magic of their own.  And there were so many flashbacks, and I didn't know how far back the flashbacks were taking me.  Twenty years?  Sixty years?  300 years?  It depended on the character, and I became quite muddled.

Another thing that stood out to me in this book was the way de Bodard brought in colonialism.  One of the main characters, Phillippe, is Vietnamese and has a magic unlike anyone else in the story.  He is immediately treated with suspicion, as an outsider, and he in turn does not feel bound by the laws and loyalties other characters have.  He was brought to Paris to fight in a war he did not believe in, dragged from his home and given very little in return for the sacrifice.  He makes so many comments about colonialism throughout the book, how even very wonderful and kind people benefit from the system and keep it propped up, so that one side can continue to gain more than the other.  This is mirrored in the relationship that Fallen and Mortals have.  Fallen don't seem to care much at all about humans; they view them mostly as expendable.

The problem I had with Phillippe, and with all the characters, really, was that I didn't feel like I knew any of them.  It's hard to justify that statement, since the book is 400 pages long.  How could I spend so much time with these people and not know them at all?  And honestly, I don't know.  They interacted but never trusted each other, so it was hard to see a lot of connection between anyone.  They all had very different back stories, and I didn't learn any of those very well, so that made it difficult.  And none of them really liked each other, so we rarely saw anyone with their guards down or willing to say anything honest or true to each other.  It was hard to break through.

There are a few shorter prequels to this book that I think I will check out in the hopes of understanding the characters and the setting a little better.  The House of Shattered Wings is the first book in a series, though it can stand alone pretty well, for the most part (in that the main mystery is solved, though there are quite a few loose ends).  I definitely plan to continue with the series; I hope at some point the plot will take us to Vietnam!  But there's a long wait before the next book comes out, and this was a complicated story, so just something to keep in mind.

Who cares if you don't understand the story when the words are pretty?

I feel like all my reviews of Patricia McKillip books are basically the same.  "Wow, what beautiful, evocative language!  But... not sure I fully grasped what happened here."

Alas, the same can be said of my experience with The Bards of Bone Plain.  I feel like I was totally jiving with this story until close to the very end, and then I was not at all sure that I knew what happened.  Did I over-simplify it?  Over-complicate it?  Totally misunderstand the symbolism?  What happened to the cauldron and the other thing, why was there so much focus just on the tower?  And how did the physics of things work?  Where was the logic, or was it all just kind of atmospheric?  Agh, so confused!

Honestly, sometimes the way McKillip goes really deep into the intangibles can be very difficult for me to follow.  But there's usually enough of the rest of the story for me to enjoy everything.  Here, there's a light steampunk aspect to the novel (very light) and a wonderfully refreshing approach to the way women go about their business and live their lives.

And seriously, McKillip can write.  Especially her descriptions of music.

Then he heard Jonah's music melding with Zoe's like silver braided with gold, like sunlight with sky, small birds flying out of his harp, and butterflies out of hers, their voices winding together, sweet, sinewy, strong as bone and old as stone.  Together, they transfixed him, spellbound in their spell, his mouth still hanging open, and all the unplayed music in him easing out of his heart with every breath.

So yes.  Definitely worth the read, especially if you have a deep connection with music. 

Love and violence in post-apocalyptic Africa

As often happens when I gather stats for my end-of-year summary, I was a bit appalled by how few books I read in 2015 from my TBR shelves.  Thus, I ended the year with a book I've owned for a few years, Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death.

Who Fears Death is a popular choice for A More Diverse Universe, possibly because of #Diversiverse's fantasy and science fiction roots.  It takes place some time in the future in Africa, where a seemingly never-ending war continues between the Nuru, the oppressors, and the Okeke, the oppressed.  Onyesonwu is a child of rape, an Ewu, with strong magical abilities and a destiny to end the genocide of her Okeke people.  She learns how to control her powers (to an extent) from a revered shaman but all too soon, she must face her destiny.

It took me a long time to read this book because of the violent premise; Onyesonwu is a child of rape, and that fact reverberates through much of the story.  There is other sexual violence in this novel that is difficult to read, too, and those acts also have repercussions for characters through the story.  I do not enjoy books in which females experience a loss of agency and power over their own bodies (and this happens more often than I'd like in fantasy and historical fiction).  That said, it is a realistic portrayal of what life has in store for more people than we'd like.  And in Okorafor's story, every woman, from Onyesonwu's mother to all of her friends ,becomes a change agent who is able to influence and change events.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of this book, though I admit I lost some steam in the second half.  I feel like so many fantasy stories get bogged down in the whole "journey to destiny" part.  It always seems to take forever, there's always some sort of internal drama in the group that's traveling together, and everyone is just waiting for the next big thing to happen.  Who Fears Death was no exception to this, and I found myself skimming a few chapters while Onyesonwu and her friends bickered their way through the desert.  However, there were some really cool characters introduced in this section, including a whole nomadic tribe of red people who traveled with the sandstorms.  Okorafor has a great sense of creativity, and the way she can bring history and tradition and culture to life in short descriptions and interactions is really impressive.

One of my favorite things about this book was the way Onyesonwu dealt with all of the stigmas against her - being female, being Ewu, being a foreigner in her hometown and all the rest.  Okorafor used her to make so many interesting points about sexism and racism and how even those who know you best can fall prey to stereotypes and jealousy and anger.  I loved that about this book, and I am so excited to see what Okorafor does with those types of issues in her other novels.

Gloriously diverse Regency era fantasy

If you remember my post about Zen Cho's short story collection Spirits Abroad, you'll know that I was super-stoked about Cho's full-length novel coming out, Sorcerer to the Crown.  I got an advance copy of this book through the help of fate and magic and pure luck, and so now I can tell you ALL OF MY FEELS about the novel!

I am probably the prime target for this book because:
1.  It is set in late 18th/early 19th century England.
2.  It is a fantasy novel.
3.  The main female character is half Indian, and that half is from southern India.
4.  The main male character is a former slave.
5.  The other kind-of main character is an old Malaysian woman.

Actually, now that I review the list, I feel like those are five things that would probably make ANYONE want to read this book, though I understand some people don't love fantasy and some people don't love historical fiction, and even though that is my ideal combination of all sorts of books, I know that is not the case for all of you.  In general, I feel sorry for all the amazing stories you are missing, but I get it!  I am probably missing BOATLOADS of awesome stories because I veer away from "literary fiction" and women's fiction.

Anyway, back to Sorcerer to the Crown.

The story centers on Zacharias Wythe, a freed slave with super-impressive magical abilities who, much to everyone else's chagrin, becomes Sorcerer Royal of England.  But magic seems to be leaving England, and Zacharias faces opposition and threats from everywhere, not least from some tiny island nation in the Pacific where vengeful female ghosts are attacking the populace.  Luckily, he meets a beautiful and amazingly talented woman, Prunella, who technically shouldn't practice magic but is really good at it, and the two set off to make everything better.

I admit that if I had a slight problem with this book, it was in the character development.  There are just a lot of people in this book.  And while I enjoyed spending time with both Zacharias and Prunella, and I think they were both awesome, I wouldn't say that they were fully fleshed out, complex people.  I would have liked to dig a little deeper with them.  But maybe Cho just had so much going on in terms of setting the scene and introducing the magical elements and explaining the class/gender/race relations between everyone that there just wasn't enough time to also develop the characters that well.  What I knew of Zacharias and Prunella I liked, but I hope that in future books, they are more full-fledged oil paintings than pencil sketches.

But seriously, I liked so many other things about the story!

One of my favorite things about Spirits Abroad was the way Cho infused all her stories with Malaysian culture, from using dialect to describing food to incorporating folklore and so much else.  She does the same thing here, even though the book is set in London and the main characters are not Malaysian, and I love that.  THIS IS WHY DIVERSITY IN PUBLISHING IS SO IMPORTANT.  How many people would think to combine Indian history with Malaysian folklore, add a healthy dollop of English Faerie, and then make light but awesome references to equal rights for women and people of color?  Not many.

And the feminism, it is awesome.  There so many different women, most of whom wield different sorts of power that complement and contrast with one another.  And Cho doesn't just hit you over the head with the feminism, she really just kind of pokes fun at history and pokes holes in its rules, and it's a lot of fun.  And then she also shows how women in different cultures (English, Malaysian, Indian and, er, faerie) push against their boundaries even while working within their cultures.

And then there's the race stuff, too!  I think Cho maybe could have gone further on the race component than she did, but this is a pretty light book, so I can understand why she didn't.  Suffice it to say that Zacharias (and, to a lesser extent, Prunella) never forgets that he is different, and so much of his personality and actions are informed by that fact.  He's always a complete gentleman, and utterly polite to everyone, so that no one knows just how frustrated and angry he is.  All because he doesn't want to give them any reason to remember how different he is.  It's subtly done but so powerful when you catch on.

All in all, this book is great!  I think you should read it.  And then tell your friends to read it!  Perhaps for A More Diverse Universe :-)

Note:  This review is based on an advance reader's copy.  I received an e-galley of the book in exchange for an honest review.

A series that improves with every book!

I generally dislike reviewing later books in a series, but I am making an exception for Lev Grossman's The Magician's Land because this series improved so much from one book to the next, and this last book in the trilogy was really, really good.

At a time when I really couldn't scrape together the effort required to finish any book, The Magician's Land was just what I needed.  I borrowed it from the library just before leaving on my trip to Europe, did nothing but read it on the whole trip to Budapest, and then finished it by reading in the evenings.  I was completely wrapped up in the story, and in a year when I've really struggled with my reading, it felt so great to sink my teeth into a book.  This year, it's really the fantasy stories that keep my attention; I seem unable to get through any other books.

The Magician's Land picks up shortly after The Magician King left off, though it's partly told in flashbacks.  Quentin Coldwater is back on Earth, and he has a new mission in life (that I won't share due to spoilers).  Suffice it to say that this mission involves many characters from previous books and brings the series to a satisfying conclusion.

Honestly, at the beginning of this series, Quentin was such a horrible person.  I wanted to spend zero time with him, and I disliked most of his friends, too.  But he really does improve with age, and in this book, he's really pretty great.  And just the whole plot of this book was fantastic.  I loved the whole Ocean's Eleven-esque heist and the dark humor with which the team approached the job, I loved Quentin's focus on his goal, I loved the time we spent in Fillory with Janet, the whole story around the gods, just everything.  Grossman clearly has great love and respect for the fantasy genre, but he's so willing to poke fun at it and turn it on its head, and it's wonderful.

Granted, you do need to read both the first book (which is, I feel, not all that great) and the second book (which is better, but not amazing) in order to reap the rewards of this one, and many people may not feel that it's worth the investment.  But I read all three books in pretty short order, and I think the world Grossman has created and the people with which he populates that world are worth the time.  The pay-off is a slow burn, but it's a good one.  Such a satisfying conclusion to the series!  I hope you give it a go, if you are a fan of the epic or urban fantasy genres.

Meet Balsa, your new hero

Moribito:  Guardian of the Spirit, by Nahoko Uehashi, is the first book in a ten-book series of which I was completely unaware.  It's set in a fantasy version of medieval Japan and centers on this amazing woman, Balsa, who is the greatest martial artist ever and who works as a bodyguard.  Her new charge is Prince Chagum, who has been possessed by a spirit.  He is being pursued by people who want to kill him and by some sort of animal who wants to eat the spirit inside him.

I am not sure how I first heard about this book, but I assume it was on a blog somewhere.  I thought it was a graphic novel, but it's not, though there is gorgeous artwork on not just the cover but throughout the story.  I also don't think I realized it was just the first in a long series, of which only the first two books have been translated into English.  Hopefully the rest are translated soon!

There were a lot of things I really enjoyed about this story.  First, it's a fantasy adventure series that features a woman as the hero, which is awesome.  Balsa is an amazing fighter who possibly enjoys fighting a little bit too much.  She has a slight romantic interest, and that man is a healer who waits patiently for her to return to him, another great example of role reversal.  A third very powerful character is an old woman.  Again - how awesome is this cast of characters?  I love the way Uehashi took what is a fairly common plot - a strong, weary person promised to help a smaller, weaker, but important person to safety - and twisted all of it around to give women and men roles they normally wouldn't get in a fantasy novel.

I also LOVED the setting.  Loved, loved, loved.  Everything felt so real, from the heavy snow in the mountains to the simple recipes.  And the way the characters interacted with each other based on class and role was so different than anything I had come across before.  It was excellent.  Uehashi wrote a novel for children and young adults but within these pages lies a lot of commentary - how facts can be embellished or erased; the power of folklore and stories; and the importance of understanding the truth, and not just listening to what people tell you.

That said, the book was not without its flaws.  The story did not flow very smoothly.  There were multiple worlds existing in the same space, which is a complicated idea to describe, and I don't know if the translator did Uehashi justice.  The description of the spirit (actually an egg) that lived inside Chagum and the animal that wanted to eat the egg were also very odd.  There were several disparate parts that were all supposed to come cleanly together at the end, but instead, it felt like cutting and pasting and the result was a little haphazard.  Hopefully the second book is better translated and easier to follow.

BUT, seriously, this book is less than 250 pages with big font and I read it on a rainy afternoon and evening.  The negatives above are, in my opinion, outweighed by the characters and the unique setting.  Check it out!

Gray London, Red London, White London, Black London

I have been in a serious reading slump since February and couldn't really find any book to keep my attention.  Last week, I got a notice from the library that it was finally my turn to read V.E. Schwab's A Darker Shade of Magic.  I was in the midst of reading Shadow Scale, the second book in Rachel Hartman's Seraphina series, but the book wasn't really holding my attention, so I switched to Schwab's.  And, poof!  The slump was over!  I was immediately pulled into the universe Schwab created.

It's not that Schwab's universe is particularly ground-breaking or original, or that the story is one that hasn't been told before in different guises.  But, like the best storytellers, Schwab takes an old and used skeleton and gives it new life.  Here, she gives us four worlds, all of which center on grand cities named London.  There's Gray London, with no magic; Red London, rich with the balance between people and magic; White London, where people and magic are at odds; and Black London, which no one talks about any more.

Kell is one of only two people across the entire universe who can travel between the worlds.  He works for the royal court of Red London, sharing messages back and forth with Gray and White London.  He also has a little side business through which he illegally transports goods between the worlds.  One night, though, he is given something truly dangerous and forbidden to transport, and it sets all the worlds on edge.  And the only person who seems able to help him is Lila, an orphan in Gray London who wants nothing more than to escape her life.

In reading over the plot summary, I can't quite pinpoint why I loved this book so much.  As Care stated so well in her review of The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessey, sometimes you just love a book, and who cares if no one else does?  I was completely entranced by the idea of four Londons with varying amounts of magic.  I am very intrigued by the way the Londons interact with each other and how those interactions may grow in the future.  I want to understand the political structures of each place.  I loved Kell and his 25-sided coat, I am looking forward to gaining a better understanding of his background and the pact that he made to his prince, and I think Lila will grow up to be pretty badass herself.

I also appreciated that, even though this is the first book in a trilogy, the book actually had an ending.  Not a cliffhanger, but a satisfying ending.  So while I am so looking forward to the next book in the series, I am happy with where this one left things.

But really, I think this was just the right book at the right time.  So often, fantasy novels are the ones that bring me up and out of my reading ruts, and that is exactly what happened for me here.  I became so immersed in the world, so attached to the characters, and so addicted to the action that I read the book in just two nights.  That hasn't happened in I don't even know how long.  And I just LOVE that feeling.  So thanks for that, Victoria Schwab!

PS - The cover art for this book is SPOT ON.  I love when that happens!  I definitely think this one will be a contender for best cover art of the year.

Non-Humans of New York

Hele Wecker's The Golem and the (D)Jinni is set mostly in Manhattan, right at the turn of the 20th century.  The two main characters are Chava, a golem, and Ahmad, a jinn.  Chava was created to be the wife of a man who died on their voyage to the new world.  Ahmad has no idea how he ended up in Manhattan - his last memory is from about 1000 years ago.  In contrast, Chava's first memory is of waking up on the ship and meeting her (ill-fated) husband.

Ahmad and Chava both stumble through their new lives in New York, trying to understand humankind - the relationships that form between people, the decisions they make, how they treat each other, who has responsibility for what actions.  They also, serendipitously, meet each other one evening, and embark upon a friendship that helps both of them understand their place in the world and deal with the consequences of their natures and decisions.

I found several things very interesting about this book.  I'm a sucker for any story with mythology or folklore or mysticism, and this book is full of all those things.  For that reason alone, I wanted to read the book.  But there was more!  For example, I really liked the way Wecker played out the tension between each character's true nature - for Chava, to solve everyone's problems, for Ahmad, to disregard everyone's problems - and their attempts to fit into human civilization.  Chava, for example, is terrified that one day, her true nature will come out and she will beat everyone around her to a bloody pulp because that's what golems do when they are threatened.  In conrast, Ahmad thinks humans over-complicate everything, and people should just do what feels good and damn the consequences.

In that way, Chava and Ahmad play out traditional gender roles even though they are not human.  Ahmad toys with plenty of women, and they are the ones who have to wake up in the morning, bereft, while he just moves onto the next person.  But it's not that Ahmad doesn't care about those women; it's that humankind fascinates him, and he needs to understand the whole species, not just one person.  And so he moves on.  Chava's whole purpose in existing, on the other hand, is to do what other people tell her to do.  In fact, they don't even have to tell her, they just have to think it and she'll know.  She is therefore very eager to please and worries constantly about whether she did the right thing.

Though the main characters were pretty fascinating on their own, I think there were far too many secondary characters who didn't really progress the story that much.  There's a bored, rich girl (doesn't every book set in early 20th century America require one of those?).  There's a curious Bedouin girl.  A cursed ice cream seller.  A lonely, quiet boy.  A lonely, quiet man.  A concerned father.  A creepy old man.  A creepy middle-aged man.  A kind middle-aged woman.  And more, and more.  We get back stories on several of these characters.  And, in general, I enjoyed these back stories, but I don't think they were necessary.  The two title characters in the novel don't even meet until 1/3rd of the way through the book (what is this, Anna Karenina?).   And while I enjoy a good, atmospheric, meandering story, this one just felt weighted down by all those characters.

That said, it's a great story to read on a cold, damp night!

Review-itas: Closing out 2014

Haruki Murakami is one of those authors that both intrigues and intimidates me.  The second book I read by him is one of his earlier collections of short stories, After the Quake, set in the months following the earthquake that shook Japan in 1995.

Murakami's stories always feel so ephemeral to me.  There is an other-worldly, dream-like quality to them that I can't quite grasp.  Only hours after finishing the book, I often can't remember what the stories were, though I remember the atmosphere of the whole collection.  I enjoyed After the Quake much more than I did The Elephant Vanishes.  Here, the characters are grappling with a huge and horrific event, so there isn't the same "meh" attitude towards life that pervaded The Elephant Vanishes.

The stories all center on characters who look back over their lives and try to understand when they were derailed, what defines them.  And often, they find that they've allowed themselves to be defined by other people or things that they don't like thinking about.  My personal favorite story was about a woman in Thailand who learns how to let go of the past so that she can move forward.  A simple lesson that shows up again and again in literature, but Murakami gives it a true touch of grace.

Cory Doctorow's In Real Life was much less successful for me.  There are a few positive points.  The main character, Anda, is a kind, shy, and slightly overweight girl who really comes into her own and gains confidence through online gaming.  And the artwork is really beautiful - Wang did a brilliant job in the way she used color.  But the premise of the story really bothered me.
There's not much I can say about this book that isn't already covered in The Book Smugglers' fantastic and thorough commentary, so I will direct you all there with this nugget to entice you to click through:

I felt utterly uncomfortable (to put it very mildly) about the depiction of the Chinese characters’ plight and the lack of viewpoint from their perspective – the stress on Anda’s feelings rather than Raymond’s about his own situation is problematic to the extreme and reeks, REEKS of white saviour complex and American superiority (cue me rolling my eyes when Anda was all horrified at the lack of proper health insurance in China when in America things are not exactly rainbows and ponies, are they.) 

 Almost immediately after finishing Lev Grossman's The Magicians, I went on to read its sequel, The Magician King.  I liked this one much more than the first book, though there was a scene towards the end that I found very disturbing.  The main character, Quentin, wasn't quite as insufferable in this book because he became aware of what a jerk he can be and seemed to take steps to remedy the situation a bit.

The Magician King maintains the humor and appreciation for the absurd that the first book featured, which I really liked.  And the audiobook narrator, Mark Bramhall, is pretty  brilliant.  I think he's a significant part of why I continue with these books.  And people tell me that the last book in the trilogy, The Magician's Land, is the best of the bunch, so I am in line to get that one on audiobook, too.  Hopefully it just continues to get better and better!

Magic isn't just for those who deserve it

I've been aware of Lev Grossman's The Magicians trilogy for some years now, but I've always been turned off by George R.R. Martin's really obnoxious quote on the cover of the book:

The Magicians is to Harry Potter as a shot of Irish whiskey is to a glass of weak tea.

Ugh, really?  Sometimes fantasy authors are such snobs.  As though JK Rowling and Lev Grossman were trying to write the same book.  As though a book aimed at children and young adults should be the same as a book aimed at adults.  As though .... anyway, I digress.  Suffice it to say that the quote itself was enough to turn me off the book.  When you combine that with the fact that I have been turning away from traditional fantasy in recent years, I just wasn't sure if this was going to be the book for me.

But I've heard a lot of positive things about the series as a whole, and I did want to try a complex doorstopper of a book on audio to see if I could handle one.  So The Magicians was it.

So what's this book about?  It's about a group of brilliant teenagers who go to Brakebills Academy to learn magic.  There, they learn how to do nearly anything they want to do, make new friends, fall in love, and then graduate.  And find that, when you can do pretty much whatever you want, it's hard to feel any sort of direction in life.  Until they one day learn that a beloved fantasy series from their childhood may have been real, and they journey into another world to try and live out all their childhood dreams.  And (of course) find that maybe the fantasy world is not quite the rainbows and unicorns they had expected.

Subversive Superhero

The Shadow Hero, by Gene Luen Yang & Sonny Liew, is so much fun to read.  The backstory is fantastic, the Asian-American hero is wonderful, the family dynamics are great, and it seems like Yang and Liew had a blast working on it together.

The book description from School Library Journal is pretty spot on, so here it is:

Award-winning author Yang and artist Liew tackle a lesser-known aspect of history, breathing new life into the Green Turtle, a 1940s comic book hero. According to lore, the Green Turtle was originally drawn to be Chinese, but publishers quashed artist Chu Hing's plans, and Hing rebelled by drawing his hero so that his face was never visible. 

The Green Turtle is cast as an unlikely 19-year-old young man, Hank, the son of Chinese immigrants who own a grocery store in 1940s America. When his mother is rescued by a superhero, the loving but overbearing woman decides that it's Hank's fate to become a hero himself, and she does everything in her power to push her son in that direction. Though Hank initially shies away from assuming the role of caped crusader, when tragedy strikes, he's eventually inspired to call himself the Green Turtle, and fight back against gangsters who have been intimidating his family and many others in Chinatown. 

Liew's scratchy, action-packed illustrations have a nostalgia-tinged vibe ideal for the gritty/hard-boiled setting, and Yang plays expertly with clichés and stereotypes about Chinese culture without ever becoming heavy-handed or obvious. A detail about the four spirits of China, one of whom allies himself with Hank's father and then Hank, injects an element of magic and of Chinese history and mythology that made Yang's American Born Chinese (First Second, 2001) such a layered and complex work. - Mahnaz Dar

How brilliant does that sound?  REALLY brilliant, and it delivers.

I have not been reading much lately.  I am not sure what happened, but after #Diversiverse, I just couldn't find any books that kept my interest and I kept flitting from one to another.  When this happens, I usually go back to the genres that I grew up on - epic fantasy and Georgette Heyer (fine, she's not a genre all her own, but she is for me).  Neither of those appealed to me this time, either, so I turned to graphic novels, and hooray!  Not only did it (mostly) work, but it also gave me the opportunity to read a book that everyone in blogosphere has loved.

I really enjoyed The Shadow Hero, not just because the premise is so fantastically subversive, though that's a lot of the reason.  I LOVE the idea that someone stuck it to the man right in front of the man's face.  But the book also has so many wonderfully realistic, self-deprecating, humorous moments.

I could talk, too, about how well-integrated Chinese culture is in the story.  But honestly, it was the fun plot and the great artwork that worked for me in this story.  I love books in which diverse characters shine and defy stereotypes and do awesome things.  But I love them even more when they are fun and hilarious and well-illustrated.  The Shadow Hero is all of those things, and I can't wait to read more.

Can you create a bird in your mind?

I only read Maggie Stiefvater's The Raven Boys because so many people on my "Trusted Opinions" list (Teresa, Ana, Lu, and Jodie) told me that it was amazing.  Lu recommended it on audiobook and it was available for immediate download from the library, so I went for it.  And I'm so glad I did, except I should have checked to make sure the second book was available on audiobook first.  Who knows when I will get to continue this series now?

 I think Teresa's review sums this book up really well, so I will refer you to her post to get a sense of what the book is about and why it is worth reading.

This is one of those books that I never would have read based on the cover and the title and the plot summary.  Even the beginning of the book, I thought I knew exactly where the story would go - Blue (really, her name is Blue?) is a poor girl with a prophecy over her head that says something like, "If you kiss your true love, you will kill him."  And then early in the book, she goes to a churchyard to learn who will die in the next year, and she sees this boy named Gansey and her aunt tells her, "“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve.  Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.”

And that is when I rolled my eyes because, well, it seems pretty obvious exactly what will happen when you link up the whole "kiss your true love and he dies" thing and the whole "If you saw someone, he's your true love or you kill him" thing.  

But I was wrong!  Or, at least, the story did not move in the predictably straight line that I expected, though perhaps it will move towards the seemingly inevitable ending at some point in the next three books.

Stiefvater takes a lot of the typical tropes of young adult and fantasy novels and turns them on their side here.  For example, the book starts out seeming like it's going to be one of those angst-ridden teen romances.  But really, there's not much romance in the book at all, and what does exist exists in service of the overall story (I think.  I am not clear right now as to what the overall story is).

I'm really glad so many people told me to read this book!  The audiobook was read by Will Patton, and he was so good at doing different Virginia accents.  I do want to read the next book in the series, but I'm hoping that the library gets the audiobook version soon so I'm going to wait and see.  But you shouldn't wait to read this one - go get it!

The Goose Girl, adapted for awesome

I considered leaving the cover completely off this review because it makes the book look like it's about some sort of pageant queen with the power to create castles and unicorns out of a field of wildflowers, and THAT IS NOT AT ALL WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUT.  So, please ignore the book cover and focus on my words because this story was so, so good!

I bought the book after Tanita reviewed it for #Diversiverse last year but only got around to reading it while on vacation.  Shame on me.  It was completely absorbing and I strained my eyes reading it on a very dark and bumpy bus ride.  It was worth it!  Also, it's only $3.99 on Kindle, and if you buy the e-book, you don't have to look at the cover, so there is zero downside.

Thorn is a retelling of The Goose Girl from the Brothers Grimm, though after reading Thorn, I realized I am not at all familiar with the story of The Goose Girl.  So I don't know how true this story is to the original, but it's true to itself and that's what matters.

I can tell you're Hazara just by looking at you

Guys, I was so excited to read this book.  I read the following description and pretty much requested it IMMEDIATELY:

This extraordinary book, derived from the long oral tradition of storytelling in Afghanistan, presents a mesmerizing portrait of a people who triumph with intelligence and humor over the oppressions of political dictators and an unforgiving landscape.
A musician conjures stones to rise in the air and teaches his art to a mute child. Master Poisoner, Ghoroob of Mashad, has so perfected his craft that it is considered an honor to die from his meals. These are stories of magic and wonder in which ordinary people endure astonishing extremes in a world of bloodshed and brotherhood, miracles and catastrophes.

With lyrical wit and profound simplicity, The Honey Thief reveals an Afghanistan of greater richness and humanity than is conveyed in newspaper headlines; an Afghanistan not of failure and despair, but of resilience and fulfillment.

 Doesn't that sound brilliant?  I was imagining Arabian Nights and The Kite Runner and all sorts of admittedly stereotypical things when I started this book.  I didn't quite get what I was hoping for.

A Multi-Generational Saga of Rebelling Against Your Parents

The House of the Spirits was the first novel written by the now-prolific author Isabel Allende.  I have never read anything by Allende before, but I've had this one on my shelf for quite some time.  As it met two of my unofficial goals of reading books I already own AND reading books by people of color (yes, I am going to qualify Central and South Americans as people of color), it was inevitable that I would pull it down from the shelves this year.

I really had no idea what this book was about going into it.  I think that was part of the fun.  It's set in a South American country (never named, though it's commonly believed to be Chile) and centers on one family, the Truebas, and their ups and downs through good and bad economic, political, and interpersonal times after the end of colonialism.  There are light doses of magical realism thrown in, and a lot about passion, forgiveness, and the complications of the many types of love that can exist between people.

Musings: Stormwitch

I am embarrassed to admit that I read Susan Vaught's Stormwitch for the A More Diverse Universe blog tour and then, in preparing to write this review, realized that Susan Vaught is not, in fact, a person of color.  Eek!

I hope you'll forgive me for thinking she was, though, when you hear the plot summary of this book.  It's about Ruba, a 16-year-old Haitian orphan.  Ruba was raised by her grandmother to be a strong Amazon warrior, keeping the world safe from the evil spirits that often take the form of hurricanes.  But her grandmother died a hurricane and Ruba moved to the Mississippi Delta in 1969 to live with her other grandma, a fiercely religious woman who thinks that Ruba's training is dark magic.  But there are storms raging all around Ruba, who enters a world still dominated  by the Ku Klux Klan and racial violence, and who must also save her loved ones from Hurricane Camille.

Musings: The Shape-Changer's Wife

The Shape-Changer's Wife has been on my shelf for six years now, but I admit I only picked it up because I wasn't sure what I was in the mood to read, and it's a pretty slim volume.

Sharon Shinn's novel is about Aubrey, a young wizard sent to learn transmorgification from Glyrenden, an older wizard who is disliked by everyone who knows him and feared by all the animals in the forest.  Aubrey meets Glyrenden's wife, Lilith, and his servants, Arachne and Orion.  All of them are a bit odd.  But Aubrey is so excited to learn from Glyrenden that he doesn't think much about it.  However, as Glyrenden spends more time away from home and Aubrey spends more time with Lilith, he realizes that things are not quite what they seem and that Glyrenden has horrible deeds in his past.  Is Aubrey strong enough a wizard to take on a master like Glyrenden?

This book was written for young adults, but I can't imagine many people reading it and not catching onto "the thing" pretty early on in the story, certainly much earlier than Aubrey.  But Shinn has a wonderful way with words, and so I didn't mind too much that Aubrey seemed denser than everyone else in the story.  Perhaps because he was so taken up with Lilith.

Lilith reminded me a lot of Sybel from The Forgotten Beasts of Eld.  She is untouchable - she doesn't have any strong emotion, she doesn't seem to care much about what is happening around her, and she pays very little attention to people when they are not talking directly to her.  She isn't classically beautiful, but she draws men to her through a tantalizing mix of complete unconcern and lonely vulnerability.

I didn't love this book.  There isn't a lot that happens, though it's so short - just over 200 pages - that I suppose not much can happen.  It's unfair of me to complain about its length when I picked it up solely  because it was so short.  But considering that I knew "the thing" less than halfway through the story, I was annoyed that the consequences of that were dealt with so shallowly.  Rather than any great events happening for most of the story, it's small things that build upon each other.  That was also similar to The Forgotten Beasts of Eld and Jo Walton's Among Others.  Except Walton did amazing, wonderful things to build tension and Shinn didn't quite accomplish that for me.  As I had already guessed the point of tension, there wasn't much of anything to build for me.  I knew what was coming, and when it came, I was not surprised.

This was a quick read, and I'm glad to have gotten it off my TBR list, finally!  But it's not one I'll revisit in future.

Musings: Short Stories Featuring Lord Darcy

I am not sure how I first heard about Randall Garrett's short stories (and one full-length novel) centered on the character Lord Darcy.  I am always on the lookout now for authors that can combine fantasy with mystery, and since reading Madeleine E. Robins' books set in an alternate Regency England, I've really craved more alternate history mystery stories.  The Lord Darcy series is the only other one I've found.

I have an omnibus edition of all the Lord Darcy series, but I have only read the two volumes of short stories, Murder & Magic and Lord Darcy Investigates.  So I'm reviewing those together and saving the novel for later.

Lord Darcy is a detective for Richard, the Duke of Normandy.  In his world, Richard the Lionheart did not die in 1199, but returned to England and France to rule well over his empire, with power passing to his nephew Arthur, not his brother John, when he passed away.  As a result of this, the Angevins have ruled most of the world- including "New England" and "New France" in what we know as the Americas- for about eight centuries, right up to the present day 1960s.  In Lord Darcy's world, there are trains but no cars.  There are healers that work for the church, but no doctors.  There is magic, but no science (though the magic is fascinatingly described in very scientific ways that involve humors and relevance).  There is a middle class, but no electricity.  And the main threat to the Angevin Empire is the Polish kingdom.  As these stories were written in the midst of the Cold War, you can assume that the Polish kingdom is that world's equivalent of our USSR.

Musings: Among Others

Jo Walton is an author I've wanted to read for quite some time.  I particularly want to read her Tooth and Claw, but Among Others was the only book by her available in the library, so I went for that one instead.  A quick search on Google tells me that there are seventy instances of this book being mentioned in my "personal network," which means that many of you have already read the book or mentioned it somewhere or other.  I must have forgotten all of those reviews, as I didn't really have any idea what to expect when going into this book.

Among Others is not an action novel.  In fact, there is very little movement at all in the book- the narrator, Morwenna, spends most of her time reading in corners of rooms and trains.  Sometimes she walks to a bus stop.  Morwenna, or Mor, as she calls herself, was injured when she was hit by a car.  Her twin sister, Morganna, was killed in the same accident.  As the story unfolds, we get small hints as to what exactly happened. Mor and her sister had to take a stand against their mother.  Morwenna came out permanently scarred, and Morganna didn't come out at all.

Now, Mor lives with her father and is sent to boarding school, where she feels so left out and lonely that her only real friends are books- science fiction books, in particular.  And we follow her there and witness her desperate attempts to keep away from her mother, her suspicions about her father's family, and her yearning desire to have a group of friends that understand her.