#yas reviews books

[notsp1derman]

a review full of childlike wonder of the wizard of earthsea, by ursula k leguin

[may contain spoilers]

“A rock is a good thing, too, you know. If the Isles of Earthsea were all made of diamond, we'd lead a hard life here. Enjoy the illusions, lad, and let the rocks be rocks.”

Ever since I've started reading A Wizard of Earthsea, two thoughts have been circling my mind:

How the fuck is Harry Potter more acclaimed than this?

Wow, the Ghibli movie really doesn't do it much justice.

Earthsea is a simple story in its core, yet so groundbreaking in so many details (and in such a subtle way too) that I just understood how special it is after I finished reading. Within a third of the size of staples in the genre like The Name of the Wind (which has a similar plot and worldbuilding as well), it manages to tell an adventure that would captivate any child and entertain any adult, even those very serious about realism in fiction like me. Although we fly by many important events in this 180 page book, each one of them feels carefully thought out, a perfect balance between the sentiments of our protagonist and the hard laws of the world.

The archipelago of Earthsea feels alive and solid under the words of this book, and there wasn't a single moment where I was fished out of the immersion because of a poorly explained piece of lore or a boring infodump about the details of commerce that I don't really care about. LeGuin weaves together hard worldbuilding and the childlike wonder of unexplained mysteries in a beautiful way, encapsulating a joy in discovering a new world that I haven't felt in years.

Of course, nothing is perfect, and sometimes I wish there was a bit more of detail about landmarks, people and even Sparrowhawk. Still, it somehow works because it brings out the imagination I had as a child to fill all of the blanks myself. In this process I the archipelago of Earthsea became mine too. I love descriptive books that paint a vivid picture of a place that exists only in the dreams of the author, but a change of pace sometimes can feel like a breath of fresh air, and this is how Earthsea felt for me.

But the most special feature of this book is the way the author uses narrative. Her way of telling the story of Sparrowhawk as an omniscient narrator, giving away teasers of later events but keeping the thrill of the journey in its twists and turns almost feels like a legend told by fireside, of a hero long gone. We know of Sparrowhawk's potential as a hero and we know he will be a great wizard, but he still feels human even with this semi-detached style of narrative so common in legends. Because although his power is vast, his hubris is entirely human.

And between dragons and magic and islands, Earthsea discreetly brings a message of balance and self-discovery, that is intrinsically connected to Sparrowhawk's development as both wizard and person. The wisdom passed through the pages doesn't feel like the author giving some unwanted lecture, but more like a sage advice that I truly am compelled to take seriously.

I can't help but love books like this, able to charm me with a wonderful world and fantastical characters, but also able to bring me reflection about human nature. By naming the shadow with his own true name, a gesture so significant in Earthsea, Sparrowhawk made peace with the dark parts of himself, that his own arrogance brought to life. And by understanding all parts of himself, he became a better wizard and finally found a bit of peace. It is a journey we all must take, albeit a less fun and more plain one.

★★★★★

[bookcred]

emily wilde's encyclopaedia of fairies; heather fawcett

[therefugeofbooks]

Hell Followed With Us by Joseph Andrew White mini review

What I liked:

Complex relationships

Fast-paced

It's gory

What I didn’t like

Repetitive inner monologues

Weak side characters

Overall, it was one of the best ya books I read in a while. It’s violent and cruel, and it doesn’t shy away from difficult topics. Recommending for anyone looking for a horror book!

[popnovelspn]

If a man tries to speak to you..

Just think ‘WWJDD’ - what would Jude Duarte do?

Break his nose

[reedreadsbooks]

Book Review: Dreadnought by April Daniels ✨🏙️⚡️

rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕

(5/5)

After Dreadnought, the world’s greatest superhero, is killed in combat, closeted trans girl Danny Tozer inherits his powers and is transformed to have the body she’s always wanted to have. Now she has to deal with having superpowers and being an out trans woman, all the while hunting down the supervillain who murdered her predecessor.

This book was phenomenal, and I’m kind of at a loss for words to describe how much I liked it.

To start, I love the world of this book. This is such a classic superhero story. Daniels uses the conventions of the genre without making things feel like a parody and subverts tropes just enough to make the story distinct.

I also really love Dreadnought as a trans narrative. This book doesn’t shy away from transphobia. Between Danny’s parents, kids at her school, and other heroes she meets, we get a pretty broad and realistic representation of the types of abuse a young trans woman might face. There’s also so much trans joy in this book. It was really nice to see Danny come into herself, and it was cathartic to watch her realize that no one could take her transition away from her. This is the type of story that will give trans kids hope for the future.

I would recommend this book to literally everyone. In fact, I plan on recommending this book to literally everyone. But because that’s not helpful, I’ll be more specific and say I highly recommend this book to fans of Andrew Joseph White. Obviously, it’s very different from his work, genre-wise, but I think the themes are really similar. If you like Hell Followed with Us and The Spirit Bares It’s Teeth, I can definitely see you liking Dreadnought.

[oracleofmadness]

This was such a delight! Gwen is a princess at Camelot, years after Arthur Pendragon has turned to myth. Arthur is her betrothed. However, neither is looking forward to their future together because both are queer.

Gwen has spent years falling for the one and only female knight that takes part in the tournament every summer while Art is falling for Gwen's brother. This story is not only romantic but is full of meaningful moments. The dialogues, the banter, is so funny and enjoyable.

The ending completely surprised me. I thought this would never get too serious, but the ending is intense!

Out November 28, 2023!

Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!

[jesncin]

⭐️✨LUNAR BOY RECIEVED ANOTHER STARRED REVIEW FROM KIRKUS REVIEWS!!!✨⭐️

We now have two starred reviews, from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly! Starred Kirkus reviews are extremely rare and difficult to get, we're beyond blown away that Lunar Boy was able to get such a prestigious mark. Reading a review praising the Indonesian and queer representation has me all in my feelings.

[jetwhenitsmidnight]

Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White

Release date: 3 September 2024

Genre: young adult contemporary horror/thriller

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Synopsis

A gut-wrenching story following a trans autistic teen who survives an attempted murder, only to be drawn into the generational struggle between the rural poor and those who exploit them.

On the night Miles Abernathy—sixteen-year-old socialist and proud West Virginian—comes out as trans to his parents, he sneaks off to a party, carrying evidence that may finally turn the tide of the blood feud plaguing Twist Creek: Photos that prove the county’s Sheriff Davies was responsible for the so-called “accident” that injured his dad, killed others, and crushed their grassroots efforts to unseat him.

The feud began a hundred years ago when Miles’s great-great-grandfather, Saint Abernathy, incited a miners’ rebellion that ended with a public execution at the hands of law enforcement. Now, Miles becomes the feud’s latest victim as the sheriff’s son and his friends sniff out the evidence, follow him through the woods, and beat him nearly to death.

In the hospital, the ghost of a soot-covered man hovers over Miles’s bedside while Sheriff Davies threatens Miles into silence. But when Miles accidently kills one of the boys who hurt him, he learns of other folks in Twist Creek who want out from under the sheriff’s heel. To free their families from this cycle of cruelty, they’re willing to put everything on the line—is Miles?

Content warnings

Transphobia, misgendering, deadnaming

Death, murder, violence, blood, gore, body horror, injury, fire injury

Gun violence

Hospitalisation

Car crash

Mentioned animal death/abuse

Implied sexual assault

Toxic friendship

Drug abuse/drug addiction

Ableism

Classism

(I did my best to get all the content warnings, but I might have missed some things so do be warned)

Review

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC!!!

I have heard nothing but good things about the author's other works, so I went into this book excited, but trying to temper my expectations in case I got let down.

Y'all. This book is pure FIRE.

This book is horrifying and visceral, but at the same time, it's moving and sincere. While this book tackles heavy topics like transphobia and classism, it's also very much about the importance of family and community.

Not to mention that the story/plot is absolutely gripping. I was tempted to finish this in one sitting, but I made myself pace it out so that I could enjoy it longer. Every chapter ended on a cliffhanger that made me want to keep reading. The author does a great job of interspersing the really dark moments with hopeful ones, so the book never gets too bogged down in despair.

One thing I have to mention is that I was very much NOT prepared for how dark this book got. I think I underestimated it because it's categorised as young adult, but this book gets really heavy.

If I had to critique something, it would be the formatting. The first page of each chapter is all black with white text, and all the other pages are the regular white with black text. The changes in page and text colour threw me out of the story a little, but TBH this is like a really minor nitpick, and also the only negative thing I have to say about this book.

[calming-chaos]

[notsp1derman]

a straightforward review of "the metamorphosis", by franz kafka

[may contain spoilers]

"The sister played so beautifully. Her face was tilted to one side and she followed the notes with soulful and probing eyes. Gregor advanced a little, keeping his eyes low so that they might possibly meet hers. Was he a beast if music could move him so?"

Finally, I've come around to read an author I've been very curious about for some time. Despite knowing already what the story entails, just from its status as a modern classic, I had no idea what the book's message actually was. But boy does it deserve this status.

With his simplistic writing, Kafka hides many layers of opinions, criticisms and symbolism, that can quickly escape your grasp if you don't pay enough attention. There are freudian slips, digs against figures of authority, some pretty relatable metaphors about mental illness and very obvious parallels between Gregor Samsa and Franz Kafka; all which can pass through unseen if you loose yourself in the more direct and absurd aspects of the book.

What stood out the most for me, however, was the slow change in Gregor's relationship with his family after being transformed, and how it was directly connected to his position as the family's only provider. Despite the hardships and him not really liking his profession, Gregor always made sacrifices for his family, a choice that persisted even though he thought himself less than human by the end of the narrative.

He was freed from the shackles of the average western life, but at the cost of his bonds with those closest to him, who shunned who they thought was a monster because they quite literally didn't understand him. And it is with this sense of absurdity and despair that we are left after the liberating but tragic closure. Much like real life, sometimes.

★★★★☆

[franticvampirereads]

I thinks it’s been something like 15ish years since the last time I read this book, and let me tell you, it still holds up. Everything about this book is still just as fun and interesting as it was when I was a kid. It’s just been really nice to dive back into a series that brings back so many memories and nostalgia.

I really liked that we got to see a different side to Briar than we did in The Circle of Magic. He was so reluctant to teach Evvy, but he was also incredibly supportive of her doing things and learning in her own way. I loved that Briar found a student that was just as stubborn as he (and the rest of his friends/family) was. I also really liked that we got to see somewhere new within this world. Street Magic is getting four stars and I’m excited to jump into the next one!

[thereadingchallengechallenge]

Review: Metal From Heaven by August Clarke Rating: 5/5

I received an ARC of this title through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

Marney Honeycutt works in the Yann I Chauncey Ichorite Factory but when their sister leads a workers' strike that turns into a massacre, they are suddenly all alone. Touched in the head by the metal they worked from birth, Marney has to get out of the city. They fall in with a gang of thieves who whisk them away to a mansion high in the hills by the sea. But Marney will come back. Because they are going to kill Chauncey and they're going to marry his daughter to do it.

August Clarke has done it again. I was captivated from the very first page by Clarke's signature dizzying, dazzling prose. I was utterly immersed in this rich world that blends fantasy and science fiction absolutely perfectly. I loved the different cultures, I especially loved the way Clarke emulated butch/femme lesbian culture, I loved that trans-ness was just part of the world and Marney never had to fight to be who they were.

The queerness really was my favourite part. It was so nice to finally read a book about a trans stone butch that feels like the trans stone butches I know. Marney felt and talked and behaved like so many of my friends do and that representation is so sorely needed. I have a list of friends a mile long to recommend this book because I know they ache to see themselves and their lives represented in media. I'm very grateful that August Clarke is able to do that with their books.

And the prose! Clarke has such a specific way of writing that just latches into your brain and doesn't let go. It flows so beautifully but has a staccato edge that I can't get enough of. I especially enjoyed how Clarke intermittently used second person to elevate how Marney was telling the story and the reason why they were doing that became so satisfying as the story went on. It was utterly brilliant.

If you are looking for a truly unique speculative fiction story that centres queerness and working class people in a story of revenge, I implore you to pick up Metal From Heaven and allow yourself to be swept away in this enthralling book. It's an absolute masterpiece.

Metal From Heaven releases October 22nd, 2024!

[popnovelspn]

If you’re having a hard time, just think ‘WWCGD’ - What would Cardan Greenbriar do?

Have a glass of wine, put on your best outfit and let someone else deal with it.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #42 – The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

This is the rare book that I read less than six months after finishing the previous entry in the series, and only the second definite conclusion to a series. It was incredibly readable and never a slog, and the big final climactic set-piece absolutely worked for me, but on the whole I probably enjoyed it rather less than The Last Graduate?

The book picks up the precise moment Graduate lets off, with El getting shoved out of the Scholomance moments before it goes spinning off into the void by Orion – her storybook monster-hunting hero/traumatized child soldier boyfriend. Who she instantly tries to move heaven and earth to drag him out, and then spends a week near catatonic with exhaustion and grief. In the end, the plot comes in the form of Liesel, the valedictorian of her year at the Scholomance, arriving and all but dragging her off to save the London Enclave from imminent collapse and consumption by a rampant Mawmouth, one of the horrifying, deathless monsters that she is one of exactly two people alive to ever kill. From there she’s dragged into the mystery of an unknown malificer destabilizing and destroying enclaves, the brewing war between New York and Shanghai, and convincing Orion’s family to help try and rescue him before the Scholomance vanishes entirely into the void.

Despite being about ostensible adults who have graduated and are properly finding their places in the world, this still very much read like YA to me – moreso, really, without the conceit of the killer magic highschool overshadowing everything else. Or, okay, have gotten disagreement when describing the series as YA before, so to be more specific – El’s romantic and familial drama are quite literally the most important things in the world, as she and her highschool boyfriend are the most important and powerful entities in all creation. With the exception of El’s mom being a saint and providing healing and support, I’m pretty sure literally every consequential act that occurs on-screen is done either by or to someone under 20. El melts down, fucks off for a week, and never answers her phone in a way that is very relatable for an overwhelmed 18-year-old but potentially world-war-starting for a walking WMD. And so on. Without the deliberately artificial setting of the Scholomance, the wires of genre convention just show through more obviously, you know? (Also, my first introduction to Novik was Spinning Silver and I’m still waiting to read anything else of hers that comes near it on the level of prose and style).

None of which is a complaint – the fact that your boyfriend’s mom is literally the worst person in the world just comes with the territory. What is a complaint is how the book treats its supporting cast. This is El and Orion’s story, and I’m pretty sure they are literally the only people in it who get – not even an arc, but just any sense of development or change over time whatsoever. They feel like characters, everyone else feels like cardboard cutouts, or NPCs in a video game. Which is a fair choice to make when space is at a premium, but my copy of this came out to over 400 pages. Even the other characters with enough personality and screentime to make any sort of impression can honestly be counted on one hand.

In consequence, this is an incredibly plot-driven novel. The pacing is both frenetic and frantic, with what feels like basically the entire thing spent either in or rushing to one crisis or big dramatic set-piece after another – a surprising amount of it is spent in airports, honestly. The epilogue mentions that they ‘crammed a decade worth of crises into a fortnight’ or something along those liens and, yeah! The contrast between this and the previous two books spreading their crises across whole school years is inescapable.

That said, that frantic, 400-page-sprint plot did work. Or, at least, the big emotional setpieces and dramatic confrontations that are clearly the heart of the whole thing absolutely hit me like they were supposed to. The finale especially.

There is a certain sort of cliche in old arguments about superhero stories, where one side says that superman is boring because he’s more powerful than the rest of the world put together and impossible to threaten, and the other says that he’s interesting for precisely the same reason. This isn’t actually true of most superman stories as far as I can tell, but it still seems an apt comparison for this book. There is absolutely no point in the entire story where ‘Can El kill this?’ is a question that is in any doubt. The horrifying monsters that the thought of fighting again in Book 2 sent her into panic attacks? She can kill them with a sentence an a wave of her hands. There is simply not a moment in the book where her efforts fail due to a lack of force – so the entire story becomes an exercise in supplying dramatic tension and a compelling action-adventure wizard-battle narrative despite this handicap. And it (mostly) works!

The series has never been big on villains – in both the previous books, the central problem being struggled against was always environmental or systemic or a matter of coordination and planning. This book redoubles the commitment, to the point of dangling the red herring of the sinister dark wizard running around destroying enclaves before eventually revealing that the real villain is, well, the collateral damage of trying to fix (metaphorical) climate change and structural inequality without a full understanding of the problem. Never a really convincing red herring, but I still enjoyed the reveal.

Part of the whole YA feel is just the themes being very close to the surface of things and legible to casual reading. What with the enclaves of comfort and luxury that every wizard is fighting for entrance to literally being built on a foundation of eternal and deathless suffering, or the number of monsters in the world being the proliferation of enclaves as China and India began catching up with the Euro-Americans leading to an arms/development race that leaves anyone not part of it just more and more fucked over, and all. Not a bad thing – honestly it’s a compliment to say that the book managed to have such clear themes with such obvious applicability to the real world without ever feeling like it had turned into a lecture. Many similar works fail the test.

It is I think kind of funny how you can use the prominence of queerness in this series to track how the culture of mainstream publishing has changed between releases. From not really mentioned at all in Deadly Education to El sleeping with a woman on-page in this. (I actually can’t remember if she ever, like, realized she was bi or it just got retroactively established as something she was already comfortable with?)

Speaking of themes – this is mostly just on me personally, but the whole resolution with El’s great-grandmother left an intense bad taste in my mouth. I’m sure it was just necessary to make the whole very cute resolution of her whole doom-laden prophecy work, but ‘yes the family matriarch basically threw my mom in the gutter with newborn me in her arms, but it was with the best of intentions! She felt really bad about it, and she was right that it was the only way things would work out well in the end!’ is a trope that just viscerally repels me. Or at least it does when El reconciling and reconnecting with the extended family that abandoned her is clearly portrayed as part of the big happy ending. I’d probably react less harshly if this was a different genre, honestly? But as it is, yeah, in the same way that being so consistent about making The System the only real villain makes the fact that there’s apparently some sort of system of instant karma and doing good things/being a good person actually does make the universe like and do good things for you ring a bit hollow.

Anyway yes, there’s definitely more to talk about – Orion as a character is a whole essay in himself, and so is his mom, but that’s enough for now. It was a very fun, addictively readable book that hit the Big Moments very well, but everything outside of them and the two main characters felt kind of threadbare and perfunctory. Still, not a book I regret reading.