buchdrache

[buchdrache]

Book review: How to Vex a Vampire (Vampire Related Crimes #1) by Alice Winters

Secretly, yaoi is my guilty pleasure and the other day I was just hooked on reading an mlm story again. With vampires. A friend recommended "How to Vex a Vampire" by Alice Winters, and it was a very good recommendation!

The novel is the first in the VRC: the Vampire Related Crimes series, which, with a changing cast, is always somehow about crime and vampires - and of course two sexy men who fall in love. Sometimes it doesn't have to be deeper than that, I confess. The first part is about the human Finn and his vampiric partner in crime Marcus. Finn is desperate to get into the VRC department of the police, which is actually 100% vampire staffed, as they deal with criminal cases that somehow involve vampires. He is assigned Marcus as his partner, who is not at all enthusiastic about this at first. Together they set out to uncover who is trying to sow discord between vampires and humans and, how could it be otherwise, slowly become closer.

I have to admit that I wasn't interested in the case that Marcus and Finn are supposed to solve at first, I had so much more fun with the two characters. At some point, however, I was interested in how their case would turn out. After all, there has been a rather tense agreement between humans and vampires for not too long, which is supposed to allow peaceful coexistence. Should the mood tip against the vampires, this could lead to bloody revolts.

But clearly the two detectives are and remain the main course. At times I felt a bit reminded of the series Lucifer, if anyone knows it. Sunshine boy (Finn) attaches himself to grumpy boy (Marcus) and just won't let go until grumpy boy goes soft (one of my favourite tropes, I confess). The bickering between Finn, who can turn anything into a dirty joke, and Marcus, who somehow tries to counter it and it always backfires, is so incredibly funny! I laughed out loud several times.

The sex scenes are tasteful and definitely pretty hot, if a bit vanilla. However, I read fanfiction and have a few friends with certain preferences when it comes to their literature, so I'm probably not a benchmark for that, ahem. In short: The sex is well written. No horrible metaphors for genitals and still tasteful.

We also have disability representation as Finn is missing one arm and one leg. He has prostheses that function almost without problems like his missing limbs and with which he can grip and run so well that it is almost unnoticeable. Again and again, we hear about how Finn deals with his prostheses, what quality of life they give him and how he deals with them mentally. I myself am not physically disabled, so I don't want to presume to judge at this point whether the representation is good or bad.

What bothered me personally, however, were the constant comments about Finn's short stature. He's not growth-restricted, he's just short. I'm not even 1.60m tall myself and I've heard every single one of these sayings Finn gets to hear enough myself. They are neither funny nor original, but simply annoying. It's no more appropriate to make comments about other people's weight than it is about their height. Also, an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory has crept into the book. There is a group of conspirators claiming that vampires secretly control humanity, and therefore want to "expose" them as "monsters". This leads to several innocent deaths, both human and vampire. Surely another motivation could have been found instead of reproducing anti-Semitism.

We won't talk about the cover at this point. It is awful and fulfils every cliché of this genre. Just ignore it, the content is really good.

If you like grumpy one falls for sunshine boy as a trope, you will definitely enjoy this novel! The characters are immensely entertaining and won me over almost immediately. The story certainly hasn't reinvented the wheel, but it's not badly told either. If you liked Lucifer, you will definitely get a taste for this one too.

Potential triggers:

- Death, violence against people

- imprisonment

- drugs

Advertising according to §6 TMG

Series information

Author: Alice Winters

Title: VRC: How to vex a Vampire

Language: English

Series: Volume 1

Pages: 314

Original price: 15,00€

Publisher: Piper

Genre: Fantasy

ISBN: 978-3-492-28090-7

Year of publication: 2019

[buchdrache]

Review: Mitternacht by Christoph Marzi

Christoph Marzi was one of my favourite authors in my youth. In recent years, however, I have had to realise that his Uralte Metropolen has unfortunately not aged well. But what about his newer works? So I grabbed Mitternacht and headed to London once again.

Nicholas lives a typical student life: Making ends meet somehow, sometimes this, sometimes that low-paid student job and generally taking a relaxed view of life. He is all the more thrown off course when he suddenly finds himself in an alternative London and then also has to learn that the ghosts of the dead linger in this London until no one in the world of the living remembers them and they fade away. Someone in hiding, however, is trying to influence the world of the living from the realm of the dead, and Nicholas, with his ability to shift between worlds, may be the only one who can turn events around for the better.

Christoph Marzi likes London as a setting and he likes a magical setting, that should be well known by now. And a nebulous London in which the dead of various times linger is pretty cool.

In this London, there are so-called Whisperers, who are ghosts hired by other ghosts to enter the stories of the deceased in their sleep from an in-between world of artists, so that their stories are not forgotten and thus the ghosts can continue to exist. The inspiration to tell certain stories does not (always) come from the authors themselves, but can sometimes be given to them.

So far, so good. I actually didn't think this was a bad idea at all and enjoyed reading about it. I am more at war with the technical aspects of the narrative. What bothered me right at the beginning was an unnecessary hetero drama when Nicholas catches his girlfriend Erica cheating and breaks up with her. Erica adds nothing to the actual plot and could have been dropped without replacement. As it was, it was just annoying and exhaustingly heteronormative.

The narrative style, too, what once fascinated me so much about Marzi, struck me as rather tiring here. I don't know if my reading habits have changed so much over the years, or if Marzi is simply weakening. But I just found it exhausting how characters sometimes repeat things several times and only reveal information in very small steps (after all, Nicholas also finds this annoying at one point, so it was probably intentional, at least in parts, for Chesterton to have everything pulled out of his nose). In general, I think the story could have been told in far fewer words, some of it drags on for a long time and takes time to get to the point.

And then there is the end of the novel. It's just a big, disappointing nothing. Marzi tells us in the epilogue how it came about: He had a severe stroke while writing, which left him paralysed on one side. This made it immensely difficult for him to write and I can absolutely understand if he then doesn't want to type tens of thousands of words when he can only manage it with great effort. Unfortunately, the novel was not yet finished at that point, and accordingly Marzi could only sketch out the ending so that the novel would come to any kind of conclusion at all. However, "any kind of conclusion" is accurate, since the last chapters are really little more than a few short sentences each, roughly telling what should have happened in these chapters. In other words, a very disappointing ending, but in this case there were simply higher powers at work, so it is actually quite remarkable that Marzi finished the novel anyway. I wish him all the best!

Those who like ghost stories can definitely give the novel a chance. For me, the narrative remained too bloated and long-winded in places (despite the fact that I read through the novel in one day) and the characters didn't leave a lasting impression either.

Potential triggers:

- Death (off page, topic)

Advertising according to §6 TMG

Series information

Author: Christoph Marzi

Title: Mitternacht

Language: German

Series: No

Pages: 314

Original price: 15,00€

Publisher: Piper

Genre: Fantasy

ISBN: 978-3-492-28090-7

Year of publication: 2019

[buchdrache]

Book review: Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

Time + Brandon = books is probably an equation that most of his fans should be familiar with by now. As we now know, we'd better not leave Brando Sando alone, or one day he'll come up with something he has to tell us "with regret", only to put not one or two or even three, but four manuscripts on the table. Admittedly, I have rarely laughed as hard as I did at his announcement for his crowdfunding campaign for his four Secret Projects. What a Brando Sando does when he suddenly has a lot of time during all the lockdowns: write. The first of the projects that came into being during this time is "Tress Of The Emerald Sea".

Tress lives in the Emerald Sea on the planet Lumar, where the seas are made of dangerous spores. If they come into contact with a catalyst, in this case water, they begin to grow explosively. Some types of spores grow into tendrils, others form deadly spikes and still others even form something like a proto-intelligence and can replicate living beings. When Tress' lover Charlie disappears, she decides to rescue him from the clutches of the sorceress who is holding him. Yet Tress herself is really just a girl from a humble background who washes the windows in the Duke's mansion. Tress, who has never left home, embarks on a perilous voyage on seasyet untraveled, making many unexpected and new friends along the way, including Huck the talking rat.

"Tress of the Emerald Sea" is, in Brandon's own words, a fairy tale for adults. And indeed it has many fairy-tale elements, a certain "once upon a time" flair, princes who need rescuing and seemingly unremarkable heroines who have so much more in them. (In fact, it's not a fairy tale, maybe with eyes squeezed just an art fairy tale, but I'm not going to dust off the subject of my bachelor thesis and analyse this again for pages and pages ^^)

Anyway, Tress is an extremely likeable protagonist. She is down-to-earth and blessed with common sense, as our narrator also likes to point out. Unlike the heroes of other stories, Tress sits down for a moment and thinks through her plan and options before embarking on an adventure. Considering how many annoying plot twists could have been avoided in other novels, this is a commendable quality. And even otherwise, Tress doesn't seem like the typical protagonist of a novel at first glance. She comes from a fairly humble background, is happy with her overall situation, likes to collect mugs, has a loving home with two supportive parents and is actually quite content with her job. And then, of course, there is Charlie, the "gardener" (although everyone knows he is actually the Duke's son), with whom Tress so enjoys exchanging stories. Tress doesn't really seem like someone who is driven to go out into the world. And yet she embarks on a hero's journey.

On this journey, she not only discovers the world, but also herself. On her world, people are extremely cautious to the point of fear when dealing with spores, as even the smallest drop of water can sometimes have deadly consequences (just imagine accidentally swallowing a few spores and they grow into tendrils inside you, not exactly appetising). Nevertheless, on her journey Tress becomes a sprouter, which are people who can grow spores specifically and even manipulate them in some ways.

Tress easily falls into hyperfixations. At first it's mugs, which she collects from all over the world. Together with Charlie she makes up stories about these cups, and during her journey she takes a bag full of her cups with her to take them out and look at them regularly. She discovers she has what it takes to be a sprouter when she feels pressured to make herself useful aboard the Crow's Song and takes the vacant post of the previous sprouter. Like all other people, she has an enormous fear of spores, yet she soon dares to experiment with them, so much so that she easily forgets the time. It's not officially confirmed to my knowledge (at least the Coppermind Wiki doesn't say anything about it at the time of writing), but it certainly seems like mild ADHD traits to me.

By no means should the narrator go unmentioned here. I don't want to reveal who it is that tells us the story, as I was spoilered and that took some of the joy out of discovering it, but I'll say this much: it's an old acquaintance who is also revealed relatively quickly, so it's no big secret. The story is told by a first-person narrator, who in turn tells us Tress' story. Whereby "us" here is also a point that remains open. Who is the "you" that the narrator keeps addressing in the story? Personally, I have the feeling that it doesn't necessarily have to be Brandon's readers, but could perhaps also be characters in the Cosmere who are being addressed.

Hoid, by the way, is once again involved and it's a great pleasure as every time! This time he has put himself in a bit of a predicament. But he claims that he deliberately took the gamble. For he has been cursed by the sorceress and since then has only been able to say gibberish. His taste in fashion has also suffered, resulting in some very amusing creations. Nevertheless, Tress realises that Hoid plays an essential role in freeing Charlie and is determined to break his curse.

After all these years of Brandon keeping so low key about his Cosmere, this is clearly a book deeply woven into the Cosmere. I can imagine why Brandon took the step of self-publishing this first, on his own terms, and only later having it traditionally released through his publisher (I myself could only afford the publisher's version, unfortunately), as it is so much more fun to read this novel when one knows at least something about the Cosmere. The story works excellently even without this knowledge, but the narrator makes an incredible number of references to other worlds in the Cosmere. I recommend having read at least Elantris and the first, better still the second Mistborn series, then many of the references make much more sense.

I just love Tress as a protagonist so much because Brandon breaks so many "traditional" narratives with her as a character, and the narrator also plays again and again with narratologically unconventional means and breaks with the expectations of the readership. My literarily studies educated heart loves such shenanigans! And in other respects, too, Tress is just such a kind-hearted person. The crew of the Crow's Song are pirates who do not really keep Tress on board with her consensus. However, Tress finds out that Captain Crow is up to no good and is taking advantage of the crew, so she decides to stay on the Crow's Song, even when she has the chance to escape, because she wants to help them. Tress is just a nice, down-to-earth person, not necessarily the typical heroine for a hero's journey, but for that very reason just the perfect protagonist for the kind of story Brandon wants to tell here. (Whereby the narrator is not Brandon, of course, but an old acquaintance *zwinki zwonki*).

Long story short: I just love everything about this novel! Brandon has once again succeeded in creating an enchanting, entertaining story that captivates its readers and boasts endearing characters and a fascinating world. And those who have already delved a little deeper into Cosmere will find many, many Easter Eggs.

Did I mention that this is the first time a dragon has made an open appearance?

Possible triggers

- Death, violence against people

Advertising according to §6 TMG

Series information

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Title: Tress Of The Emerald Sea

Language: English

Cover illustration: Carlos Guimerà

Series: No (but part of the Cosmere)

Pages: 369

Original price: $29.99

Publisher: Tor

Genre: Fantasy

ISBN: 978-1-250-89965-1

Publication Year: 2023

[buchdrache]

Book review: He Who Drowned The World (The Radiant Emperor #2) by Shelley Parker-Chan

What would you sacrifice to achieve your goal? This is the theme of the second volume of Shelley Parker-Chan's Radiant Emperor duology, "He Who Drowned The World".

Zhu has crowned herself Radiant King and now calls herself Zhu Yuanzhang. Now that she has seized power over the Red Turbans, she has her eye on her ultimate goal: the imperial throne, to wrest it from the Mongol conquerors. But she is not the only party in the race for the throne. She pins her hopes on her only enemy, Ouyang, whom she forces into an alliance in order to gain power over his army. With this force, she marches towards Dadu and is prepared to do anything to achieve her goal. However, she does not realise how much she will have to sacrifice. Not yet.

What I like so much about Zhu is her ruthless character. She has a goal in mind and is willing to do anything to achieve it. It started in her time at the monastery, when she blackmailed one of the other monks for something he hadn't even done, in order to protect herself. By now she leads whole armies. The sacrifices she is prepared to make are correspondingly greater, and she does not shy away from human lives.

That definitely doesn't make Zhu someone I would personally want to spend time with, but reading about it I love! There are plenty of shining heroes. But reading how Zhu still manages to use her indomitable will to get her people to voluntarily drown and then be revived, for example, is incredibly captivating.

And then there is Ouyang, who murdered the man he loves to avenge his family. He also strives to overthrow the Mongol ruler in order to finally avenge the murder of his entire family by ending Mongol rule. This is now Ouyang's only goal in life and he literally lives as if there is no tomorrow for him after that. He pushes forward relentlessly and his whole being is focused on this goal. When he is captured by Zhu, and Zhu takes his army away from him, it almost drives him mad. In order to be able to live with the emotional pain and conflict, at least long enough to reach Dadu, Ouyang turns to self-harm, which very soon takes on addictive traits. However, Zhu is able to control him over this when she learns to inflict exactly the kind of pain he craves.

I love the frenemy trope because it opens up such wonderful areas of tension. Even though it's not so much the "friends" part. More like allies against their will, because Zhu is able to convince Ouyang that their goals are aligned and that they can be more successful together.

We know how the story ends because it has a historical source (albeit quite freely interpreted). Zhu Yuanzhang will found the Ming Dynasty, which means she will succeed. So the suspense is rather on the way there, and it wouldn't hurt if Zhu doesn't have to sacrifice very much on this very blood-soaked path to reach her goal. There is no real happy ending for the characters in this series. For Zhu and Ma it is rather bittersweet, for many others it ends in tragedy with nasty surprises. Ouyang literally ripped my heart out. He may have reached Dadu, but must realise a bitter truth there. 

Much of what I have already praised so much about volume 1 I find again here. However, I personally would have hoped for a little more time with Ma. At some points, the events also seemed too deus ex machina and give the impression that they happen because Shelley Parker-Chan wanted them to, rather than because things turn out that way. A small weakness compared to Part 1, but one that hardly detracts from the overall picture.

The Radiant Emperor is completed with this volume. Shelley Parker-Chan has proven that they can write incredibly well. Their strength lies above all in the incredibly good introspection of the characters. I also particularly enjoyed the queer look at gender and gender roles. With that, it's pretty certain that this won't be the last one I read by Shelley Parker-Chan.

Possible triggers

- Death of animals

- blood

- Death, murder, violence against humans

- war

- Mutilations

- Self-harm

- Queer hostility, partly internalised by characters

Advertising according to §6 TMG

Series information

Author: Shelley Parker-Chan

Title: He Who Drowned The World 

Language: English

Cover illustration: Lucy Scholes

Series: Volume 2

Pages: 486

Original price: £14.99

Publisher: Mantle

Genre: Historical Fantasy

ISBN: 978-1529043440

Publication Year: 2023

[buchdrache]

Review: She Who Became The Sun (The Radiant Emperor #1) by Shelley Parker-Chan

I might have a weakness for morally questionable characters who will stop at nothing to achieve their goal. Spice it up with a little gender fuckery and I'm so on board! After Iron Widow, I think it was predictable that I would love She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan almost as much!

In a remote village in China circa 1345, a girl outlives her entire family in a famine. Her brother was prophesied greatness, but she was prophesied nothingness. When she is the last survivor, she takes not only her brother's name, Zhu Chongba, but also his destiny for greatness. Thus begins her journey from a girl of no significance to the founder of the Ming Dynasty, which is to end the Mongol rule of the Yuan Dynasty.

In order not to starve, Zhu joins a Buddhist monastery. There she pretends to be a boy, Zhu Chongba, which results in the beginning of what I find an extremely fascinating way of approaching gender. In the course of the novel it becomes clear again and again that Zhu does not see herself as a girl or, later, as a woman. She has a woman's body, which she has to hide, but she repeatedly rejects being a woman.

To resonate in likeness to a eunuch, whose substance was neither male nor female – it was nothing less than a reminder from the world itself what she tried so hard to deny: that she wasn’t made of the same pure male substance as Zhu Chongba. She had a different substance. p. 52

She speaks of it herself as if her identity as a monk is something third that stands outside the binary of man and woman. This repeatedly opens up possibilities for her in the novel that stand outside the possibilities of other people, simply because they are anchored in the gender binary.

The eunuch already mentioned here is Ouyang, who was captured and castrated as a child by the Mongol rulers as punishment for his father's treachery. Ouyang grew up alongside Esen-Temur, the son of the Prince of Henan and one of the leading Mongol generals, for whom he leads the Mongol troops into battle against the Red Turban rebels.

I personally adore the relationship between Esen and Ouyang! They both have feelings for each other, but they can't live them out, or even admit them to themselves. They both live in an extremely masculine society that places masculinity above everything. Two men having a romantic relationship does not fit in there. In addition, as a eunuch castrated in childhood, Ouyang never developed the typical secondary male sex characteristics. He is beardless, his voice is very high-pitched and his facial features very soft. It is always emphasised that he is womanly beautiful to look at. Ouyang despises his appearance because it visibly sets him apart from the men around him.

Another major theme for the relationship between Ouyang and Esen is, on the one hand, their pining for each other, which, however, is never addressed absolutely directly, always only very cleverly just outside the explicit. On the other hand, however, it is overshadowed by the fact that it was Esen's father who had Ouyang's entire family wiped out up to the ninth generation and castrated Ouyang. Ouyang grows up with the Mongols who murdered his family, at the same time he has deep feelings for that same Mongol, this seemingly irresolvable dichotomy is just wonderful and so perfectly executed!

Ouyang and Zhu face each other as enemies for a long time, but are both somehow connected through their different social gender. Time and again, it comes up how there is a certain mutual understanding between them. Zhu has been fascinated by Ouyang ever since Ouyang came with Esen's soldiers to burn down Zhu's temple. Ouyang is Zhu's first contact with a non-binary social gender that deviates from the social norm (read: male), much like Zhu's masculinity is not a traditional masculinity.

The novel addresses many heavy topics that can be triggering at times, but focuses on the characters' inside view and their inner experience rather than what is happening around them. Some very extreme themes are addressed through a fade to black. At one point a child is murdered, but this is not explicitly written out, only addressed in retrospective. Depictions of violence are also not described in too much detail, although the novel is not without blood and violence.

Personally, I think the focus on the characters' inner view is very well done. Shelley Parker-Chan manages to find extremely apt words to convey the inner experience of the characters. Especially Zhu Chongba's extremely strong desire for something as abstract as greatness, even for her at the beginning, becomes tangible.

The silence felt fragile. Or perhaps it was she who was fragile, suspended in the pause, Every step was a test for her courage to be Zhu Chongba, and her desire for that great fate, I want it, she thought, and the force of her desire pumped her blood so strongly that it seemed a miracle that her nose didn’t bleed from it. The pressure grew, all but unbearable, crushing her fears and doubts smaller and hotter until they ignited into pure burning belief. I’m Zhu Chongba and greatness is my fate. p. 121

Zhu Chongba is a person who will do absolutely anything to achieve her goals. Neither is she too refined to humiliate herself for it, nor does she shy away from collaborating with former enemies if they offer an opportunity to get closer to her goal. And in no way does she have any inhibitions about sacrificing other people for it. And I just love everything about it!

The novel contains a sapphic relationship between Zhu and Ma as well as an "it's complicated" mlm relationship between Esen and Ouyan that can best be described as "bromance with very clear homoerotic undertones very slightly out of reach of the two of them". And anyway, just everything about this novel is queer, especially the genderrepresentation. In case it wasn't clear enough already: this is a strong recommendation! If you liked Iron Widow, you'll also love this novel (and vice versa).

Possible triggers

- Death of animals

- Blood

- Death, murder, violence against people

- War

- Mutilations

- Child Death

- Famine

- Queer hostility, partly internalised by characters

Advertising according to §6 TMG

Series information

Author: Shelley Parker-Chan

Title: She Who Became The Sun

Language: English

Cover illustration: Mel Four

Series: Volume 1

Pages: 411

Original price: £9.99

Publisher: Pan Books

Genre: Historical Fantasy

ISBN: 978-1529043402

Publication Year: 2021

[buchdrache]

Book review: Storm of Wings (Dragonmaster #1) by Chris Bunch

Sometime in the distant past, I don't even know how long ago, I got hold of "Storm of Wings" by Chris Bunch, the first part of the Dragonmaster Trilogy, a fantasy series from the early 2000s. Dragons always get me, no matter how unappealing the premise may sound at first. I guess I'm quite predictable when it comes to that, ahem. The only question then is whether the book is any good. Hal Kailas is the son of poor miners somewhere in the middle of nowhere. What his area has besides ores, however, are dragons, which have fascinated Kal since childhood. He knows: his destiny lies not underground, but high in the heavens. When war breaks out over the land, Hal is drafted and somehow manages to survive the infantry. A new weapon is set to change the tide of war for good, as for the first time dragons are ridden by humans and led into battle. Hal is determined to become one of those dragon riders.

So far so ordinary. The novel certainly didn't reinvent the wheel, wasn't the worst in all aspects, but could have done a lot of things better. The novel shows quite well how the life of a poor wretch from very simple circumstances in a pseudo-medieval world can look like, especially when Hal is virtually drafted into the army off the street while still trying to struggle from job to job. Especially at the beginning his life is pretty miserable, suddenly he is thrown into the brutal reality of war and sees his comrades dying like flies. The whole thing would certainly have made a much more forceful impression if the entire novel hadn't been told in such a terribly matter-of-fact way. Maybe it's just Hal's way of dealing with things in such an unemotional way; his situation can definitely dull him. But especially towards the end he swears bloody revenge for the death of someone who meant a lot to him, and none of that comes across to the reader either. Everything is told in such a dry and episodic way, especially at the beginning the novel jumps from scene to scene and rarely lingers longer with the characters who enter Hal's life and then leave it again just as quickly. They may have left an impression on Hal, but not on the reader, who can only take on the role of passive spectator.

The main attraction of the novel are, of course, the dragons. The story of a boy and his dragon is by no means new (Eragon was published around the same time as this novel), but here the dragons are nothing more than horses with wings. At the beginning of the novel I can still feel Hal's fascination with dragons, but this fades completely into the background as soon as Hal is drafted into the army and also later when Hal actually starts training to become a dragon rider. Dragons are nothing more than a tool here, a means to an end, and basically nothing happens except that riding is reinvented. Hal is among the first to learn to ride a dragon, making him one of the pioneers in the field. I would have expected us to learn significantly more about dragons than just animals that happen to have wings and have not been ridden by humans before. Dragons are the epitome of fantasy! They are powerful and formidable and terrifying and no one is a match for them. After all, they are the medieval nuke; Aegon Targaryen took all of Westeros with just three dragons (and a few lousy armies) and united it under him. Here the dragons are simply a fancy means of transport and not at all fascinating. All rather sobering and disappointing.

The first novel revolves exclusively around the war between two nations. Those nations remain nothing more than meaningless names. Horst could have been pitted against Peter, and that would have been just as meaningful. It is suggested that the dragons may be fleeing from something in their original homeland to the region where Hal comes from, but the novel just didn't give me enough motivation to pursue this further. Also complicating matters is the dialect that is written out in places. I don't know if it's a particular English dialect, but it's always difficult to have to read written-out dialect, even more so as a non-native speaker. All in all, the novel falls far short of its potential. The worldbuilding is just mediocre and the dragons are merely tired lizards that can't keep up with their genre counterparts. Possible triggers - Death of animals - blood - Death, murder, violence against humans - War

Advertising according to §6 TMG Series information Author: Chris Bunch Title: Dragonmaster: Storm of Wings Language: English Cover illustration: Les Edwards Series: Volume 1 Pages: 407 Original price: £ 6.99 Publisher: Orbit Genre: Fantasy ISBN: 1-84149-192-6 Year of Publication: 2003[/READ-MORE]

[buchdrache]

Review: Identitti by Mithu Sanyal

"Identity does not determine the things we do, but it does determine the things other people do to us." (S. 410)

They still exist, the novels that turn one's worldview completely upside down. "Identitti" by Mithu Sanyal is one such novel. Immediately after I finished reading the novel, I rushed to my PC to type these lines, so as not to lose the feeling that the novel had created in me. It has been working in me for days. The story has opened up a field of themes for me that is completely contrary to what I assumed up to now.

Scandal! The famous professor Saraswati is in fact white and has only lied to everyone about her Indian identity. Is it even a lie? Her student Nivedita, at any rate, is shocked by the revelation, she feels cheated and deceived. She immediately goes to her professor to get answers. Answers to the question of why Saraswati did what she did, but also to find herself and her tangled identity.

Nivedita is the protagonist of the novel and at the same time her story cannot be told without Saraswati. Nivedita's mother comes from Poland, her father from India, and she herself grew up in Germany. Is she now Polish, Indian, German? All her life, Nivedita has been looking for confirmation from outside, putting on other people's identities like others put on clothes. First this happened in the form of her cousin Priti, who grew up in England in a strong Indian community, then later with her professor Saraswati, who teaches postcolonial studies at the University of Düsseldorf.

The novel tackles a highly sensitive and heatedly debated subject area: Identity and Identity Politics, and at the same time it wraps up the subject in a witty and brisk read. I was gripped by the style from the start and soon by the subject matter. The narrative focuses strongly on intellectual discourse, but without overloading it with scientific jargon.

What moves me most personally, however, are the questions that are opened up here: If categories like race and gender are just social constructs, what constitutes our identity? Where do the lines run between identity, cultural appropriation and blackfacing? What makes us us?

The novel does not provide clear answers, because there are no clear answers to these questions. But it provides plenty of material to think about.

It is also interesting how the novel is arranged. It is a collage of different media: classic narrative text, transcripts of radio broadcasts, newspaper columns, tweets, Instagram posts and so on. Almost like real life is a collage of different aspects. For many of these posts, the author asked actual people to contribute. She described the context of her novel to them and asked them to write a tweet as spontaneously as they would if they read about a case like the Saraswatis. And indeed there was. In 2015, Rachel Dolezal was outed by the press as white, who until then had been living as a Black woman (unlike Saraswati, whose identity is POC). The case inspired Sanyal to write her novel.

"Identitti" is, despite everything, fictional, although real people appear and all the places mentioned also actually exist. But this does not diminish the questions the novel raises, as they have an all too real impact on all our lives.

If race, like gender, is only constructed, then why should it be okay to hormonally and surgically adapt one's own body to one's identity in the case of gender, but not in the case of race? Where is the difference? This question has bothered me from the beginning. I don't have a clear answer yet, but I am fascinated by this question. Perhaps there is no need for a clear answer. In any case, I have learned that there is a term, transracial, that describes what Saraswati lives.

In my search for answers in the novel, I noticed with interest how the characters engage in discourse around it. Saraswati's opponents are outraged. They accuse her of cultural appropriation, racism and blackfacing. Saraswati counters them with numerous arguments. But while her opponents are just spouting phrases, Saraswati is able to give them calm and level-headed (if occasionally a bit populist and flashy) whole lectures to justify why she did what she did, making well-substantiated arguments and numerous cross-references to academic literature. One particular passage caught my attention:

""Are you going to claim to be Aboriginal next, then, when everything can be interchanged?" sneered Oluchi's friend." (S. 244)

When I first heard about the fact that apparently you can actually change physical characteristics to make passing as transracial (cisracial?) possible, I was confused. Race for me until then was something inherent, something you are born with and that is not changeable. I can't suddenly be Black, I am, after all, white.

But the same is true of gender. I have the gender I have, I was just assigned a different one at birth. What Oluchi's friend says here is one-to-one TERF rhetoric, only applied to race instead of gender. Race as a category was artificially created. Race is not linked to physical characteristics, race has no biological basis, but oppressors use physical characteristics to support their theories. The same happened with the category of gender.

Maybe that was the moment that made me change my mind. In the epilogue to the novel, Sanyal mentions the text "trans. Gender and Race in an Age of Unsettled Identities" by Roger Burbaker. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but this text also seems to relate the categories of race and gender. So it sounds like a worthwhile further read.

I do have one criticism, however. Precisely because the novel relates race and gender as categories, I would have expected gender to be dealt with as sensitively as race. But that is not always the case. The novel is gendered throughout, so there is an awareness of the subject. A genderqueer cis woman does indeed appear. Nivedita is initially confused as to whether Toni is a man or a woman when she appears, but then nonetheless genders her based on physical characteristics before asking Toni for her pronouns. I think a gender-sensitive reading could have tweaked this a bit.

I don't know if this society is ready for the discussions the novel opens up, but it would be nice if it was. The novel is definitely a good and important loud voice on this.

"To say only gender can be truly trans is the same as trying to distinguish real science from ... other forms of knowledge-making, high art from low art, art from craft." (S. 243)

Possible triggers - experiences of racism - Racist attacks - terrorist attack in Hanau is addressed - toxic relationship

Advertising according to §6 TMG Series information Author: Mithu Sanyal Title: Identitti Language: German Cover illustration: Raja Ravi Varma: Kali, before 1906 Series: No Pages: 424 Original price: 22€ Publisher: Carl Hanser Verlag Genre: Fiction ISBN: 978-3-446-26921-7

Originally posted on 15/01/2023

[buchdrache]

Book review: A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire #1) by George R.R. Martin

"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die", said Cersei Lannister to Eddard Stark, and it is probably the most telling saying of the entire series. Westeros and its Seven Kingdoms are in constant conflict with each other, each prince spinning his own intrigues and playing the game of thrones according to his rules. Losing is synonymous with one's own downfall.

The Stark family has to experience this painfully when they try to bring the Lannisters to justice for the attempted murder of their son Bran. In addition, Eddard Stark, Prince of Winterfell, finds out a dark secret about the twin siblings Cersei and Jaime Lannister and thus gets further caught up in the Lannisters' machinations. At the same time, overseas, Viserys Targaryen is willing to pay anything to regain the Iron Throne, of which he is the rightful heir and which had been taken from him by Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark. He leaves no stone unturned, even if the price is the freedom of his sister Daenerys.

Like no other, Martin knows how to develop his world as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He explains little, rather everything unfolds through the characters themselves, something few can do as well as he does.

You have to continually stay with the story to keep track of all the houses, their allegiances and their relationships to each other. A glossary at the end of the book helps with this, especially when reading for the first time. However, it is precisely the complexity that makes the series so appealing. Martin knows his characters down to the last detail; each of their actions evokes very individual reactions in the other characters. What was a rolling stone at the beginning is a thundering avalanche at the end. For this reason in particular, it is worth not only reading the series once, but also taking it off the shelf again later. If you are still busy sorting through all the names the first time, you can enjoy the depth of the world much more when you read it again.

And not to forget all the wonderful quotes and great moments. Martin is a master at building impressive scenery, as well as bringing it down again just as impressively. The emotional ups and downs that the reader experiences are also not likely to be passed over. You either hate Martin's characters - and he can develop truly hateful characters - or you love them, no matter what abominations they actually are. As is rarely the case with a book, you root for, fear, hope (mostly for the sake of otherwise), cry and curse with the characters. George R.R. Martin is merciless with them - and his readers.

If you love fantasy, you can't avoid A Song of Ice and Fire. However, when reading it for the first time, one should be prepared for the countless names and their relationships to each other. Complex worlds are often not reader-friendly for a first read. Once you get over that, however, it is definitely worth a read and won't let you go until the last page.

Dates A Game of Thrones, A Song of Ice and Fire #1: ISBN 978-0-553-57340-4, Bantam Books, 2011, 7,40€.

originally posted on 09/03/2016