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noahsbookhoard · 5 months ago

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📚January 2025 Book Review (Part 1/2)📚

I am cramming as many reading time in January and February because from March to May I will be back in school and I won't have as much time. This is driving me insane just thinking about it.

Part 2 here

Les Fourneaux de Crachemort by Raphaël Bardas

Four friends, comedians and thieves in their spare time, may have robbed the wrong house: now they are fleeing the city with nothing but the cloths on their back and the items they stole, a theater mask that makes every audience laugh, a quill which can rewrite history, a talking but cowardly rapier and a coat that can create a winter storm. They join an itinerant merchant cart, selling sausages and entertainment, and fleeing from the people who want them dead. But the items they stole might be more important than they first thought for the Witch Crachemort, which was thought dead for a thousand year, is coming back.

Weirdly enough with this premise, the book is kinda grim at times: there's massacres and beheading and just an awful lot of deaths. No plot armour for protagonists whatsoever. But the book is really good and the story is gripping.

One tiny reproach: when you put Magic Items in your fantasy book with a Big Bad Villain, your reader will expect the Magic Items to be of use to beat the Big Bad Villains. No spoilers here but they don't exactly do in this book, so the ending felt a bit odd to me. Good job challenging the reader's expectation but the reader (me) was still expecting that stuff.

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

Jam lives in a city free of monsters since before she was born. But accidentally releases a monster hunting feature from her mother's painting who reveals her terrible news: there is a monster, and it dwells in her best friend's house. How do you fight a monster who isn't supposed to exist? Who do you tell when it's one of the adults you are supposed to trust? How do you convince people when everyone believes monsters are all gone?

It's so nice to have a young trans protagonist and not have the plot revolving around her identity. She is who she is and there's no problem because the monster who would have challenged her are gone. Or are they?

This part of the book is what feels so important, especially today: you might arrest people and change laws and put better people in charge but the monsters and their ideas are never truly gone. Pretending that they are leads to granting them entry again because no one would believe the victims, after all there's no such thing anymore, right? Fighting for rights never stops, it sucks but it's true.

This is a middle grade book and a very good message for any young reader to hear.

Le Crime de l'Orient-Express by Agatha Christie

It's such a classic among classics I barely need to introduce it. It means that I already knew the culprit and therefore could try to focus on how Christie did her thing. I don't if what it says about how good she is or how bad I am that even with all the elements in hand I missed key evidences. She is brilliant and I'm loving it. 10/10 it is one of her best novel for a reason.

You Look Like Death (A Tale from The Umbrella Academy) by Gerard Way

Klaus is my favourite from the main comics so I was excited for him to have an entire spin-off. I loved it more than the Hotel Oblivion arc and maybe even the Dallas one.

I was worried at first because the trap seemed too obvious for anyone to miss but hey! It's Klaus we're talking about! But it was fun to see how the situation somehow backflipped to being in Klaus' favor without him doing anything, in true Klaus fashion.

A fun read, I really like the universe of the comic so it was good to see it again.

Les guerriers de l'hiver by Olivier Norek

This is a historical novel, I haven't read many, especially lately. And it deals with the war between Finland and Russia from 1939 to 1940 and especially with Simo Häyhä, who is considered to be the best sniper in history. This is a period I know absolutely nothing about, but I saw this book absolutely everywhere all summer and autumn last year so I caved.

It is really interesting, and apparently the author did extensive research so I trust the setting and events are accurate. I was a bit worried at first about what the tone would be like (with a war novel it can go overenthusiastic really fast) but while it faithfully represents the soldier's did it never goes around praising war.

The writing is good too, I believe the author is primarily a thriller author but the style suits historical subjects. A very informative book.

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Oh this was lovely!

I loved the ghibli movie a lot as a kid and heard about the book through here, and how it was crazier even than the animated movie. So now I've finally come around to reading it and I was absolutely charmed!

Sophie is so nice and clever! I can't believe Howl managed without her at all. Calcifer and her bickering and plotting was a lot of fun. Howl is such a drama queen I love him too!

I was kinda skeptic about the whole Wales Is Real Actually part but it works! I was confused about quite a few aspects along the way but let the book do its thing and in the end I had this moment of oh, that's why.

Also the romance between Owl and Sophie is adorable. I loved that ending so much it really made the book from a good read to a favorite.

Yellowface by R F Kuang

Getting from Babel to this was kind of a leap but a good one! I really liked this.

The entire story is told through the perspective of a white woman stealing an Asian American author's work and desperately trying to get away with it. I don't know anything about the publishing world so this is a good if sometimes disturbing insight.

The unreliable narrator really is the best feature about this book, it's a malicious pleasure to see her try to work out a reason why what she did is good, actually and people are just being mean for no reason at all! As a reader you are mostly waiting for the author shie to drop.

On that part I found the ending a bit wanting. Maybe I was expecting a more spectacular downfall for June, the main character but maybe she doesn't deserve the publicity.

Cent millions d'année et un jour by Jean-Baptiste Andrea

I had read his latest book Veiller sur elle last year and I loved his writing so much I wanted to revisit it.

This one is the story of a palaeontologist chasing a dream, the story a man told to children of the skeleton of a dragon he saw twenty years prior when he was lost on the mountain. The evidence is thin and the localisation is hazy but he and his team went on the adventure anyway.

I don't want to say too much because just like Veiller sur elle there is a twist. This is both a really sad and really hopeful story and I was amazed once again at how right the character felt, they feel so human in all the good and bad. It is also a story about deep and long friendship and what you can sacrifice for your dreams and the dreams of those you love.

I definitely found one of my favourite authors. I can't wait to read more.

Les Chants de Nüying by Émilie Querbalec

I was so so so disappointed. The back cover was talking about exoplanets and first contact and alien whales and I was super hyped!

And the book begins and it's chinese-American Elon Musk (with lack of charisma and overinflated ego to match) dragging several hundred scientists to a new planet so he can test that brand new reincarnation technology that's only just for him and no one else. It goes so badly that 2/3 of the people die in space and the rest crashed on the planet and starts dying there too for good mesure. And when FINALLY the story starts giving us the goddamn aliens I was promised the book ends. I think you can sense how salty that made me feel.

The problem is that even the story the book actually tells could have been good! The ethic of cloning and transfering of consciousness of a person to a clone is interesting. And bringing the bouddhist perspective on this question could have been really refreshing! But instead we get the "religion bad science good" spiel which is as fresh as thrice over reheated leftover pasta.

Now we get to the part that made me want to tear the book to shred with my damn teeth, that's how angry I was:

The book is saturated with technical science terms which are 1) never explained or defined and 2) never repeated they are just dropped out of context and never serves any purpose in the narrative (for example there's a sentence that says something like "they set up the hydroponic farm before retreaving the subaquatic beacons and then they had dinner." and none of those shits are plot relevants. And she does that. All. The. Time.) Cramming lingo into the text don't really make your book look more scientific but whatever, that could have been a mi or hindrance

BUT

and that's why I am so mad, the book is also factually wrong on so many easily researchable aspects! There's "vapor shower" in the space ship: this is not how you shower in zero gravity. They eat strapped to chairs with plates magnetised to stay on the table, one tiny problem is your fucking lentils won't stay politely on the plate just because you said so this is zero G they'll fucking float. This is why astronaut don't eat with forks and plates in zero gravity. Checking this took me 10 minutes on YouTube, the author cites her sources at the end with like 6 or 8 books on Bouddhism and Tibet, which is cool I guess, but you are writing a sci-fi novel, research your fucking sci-fi! Another example: Two characters go on a three day trip on foot through the polar climate and unbreathable atmosphere. At some point they pause and have lunch. Quick question: how do you eat lunch with you fucking suit that you can't remove or you die? How do you do that for three fucking days? They have nothing but a camping tent how do you carry three days worth of breathing air? This is stupid as fuck. The book isn't even consistent enough to set how long a day on Nüying (the exoplanet) last!

So yeah that's not a recommendation from me, there's far better stories out there.

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