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The Golden Enclaves - Naomi Novik | Book Review

12/24/2022

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          WOW. I knew it was going to be amazing, because every book in this series has been utterly astounding, but even with that high bar of expectation I was impressed.
            It perfectly continues the attack on the concept of an innately or naturally 'fair' society, aggressively transposing it's arguments of a rigged system from Education to the wider concept of governing Institutions as a whole. The whole notion of governance as as system existing in any state of beneficence at all is eloquently and poignantly ripped to shreds. As soon as Active Consensus becomes Systematized Bureaucracy, things start to tip away from any chance of being equitable, and while that's awful, you can't just blame the oppressors as straightforwardly selfish/evil. It's only rational to do what you can to keep your own as safe and comfortable as possible, even at the expense of others (especially if you don't have to personally witness, let alone execute, the cost).
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       This novel is delightfully straightforward in its criticisms of society, and is also a perfectly wonderful story in its own right, one that simply hits harder for its critical poignancy. It's shorter than I wanted it to be, and a little to simplified to hone its point into something all but the most determinedly ignorant readers have to acknowledge as valid. 
            There's no one Big Bad, because the real world isn't that simple. The truly big bad in all of this is the concept that knowingly doing Evil is EVER justifiable, particularly when you have power. Ophelia is vile. But she wanted to do something good. The Chinese Dominus is also vile, also out of a desire to do good. The list goes on.
       Sex is a thing. That's just there. It happens. Repeatedly. And it MEANS SOMETHING DIFFERENT every time it does. El LOVES Orion, end of story. Whom she choses to have sex with in the chaos of grief and a frantic ping-ponging flight from one emergency to the next doesn't affect that at all. And he wouldn't care one whit. He wants to be permitted to be in her life however she will allow him to be there. It's not his place in anyway to judge her for her actions with other people if they haven't discussed it in any way, so he never does.
           It's not proactively focused on as a thematic point, but it's there, and I feel like I have to address it because it's the singular out-of-context detail that seems to be attracting the most hate from readers who refuse to engage with it critically.

            Also, El goes God-Mode! She has all the power in the universe and NONE OF IT MATTERS. Power isn't the answer. Power doesn't fix things. Power doesn't make things easier or better or safer or Good. All having power does is give you a legitimate choice. Because being a little bit Evil to protect your children by being complicit in a greater Evil isn't really a choice. Some people can break through that kind of thought, but a lot of people can't. There were plenty of normal people who joined the Nazi's because it was safer than fighting them. There are plenty of people who don't speak up to support gay rights because they have young children in school and if their kids's schoolmates get spoonfed hate for gay rights and their family is seen as gay sympathizers, their child will be bullied. There are plenty of kids who are bullied because their parents are vocal activists and to make it stop they adopt an aggressive anti-whatever attitude and themselves become aggressors. People can be awful, and the worst thing in the world is that they're usually at their worst for what they perceive as good reasons.
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          Power doesn't solve problems. But it lets you have a legitimate choice in what you do about the issues you face.

​          The only thing that solves problems is the decision to be Good, no matter what. No compromise, no accepting the lesser Evil; it's not practical and it's not easy and it doesn't do much if you do it alone, but you can join the Nazis or join the French Resistance.

          All the little threads from across the series get tied up beautifully, and the story develops naturally with compelling twists and turns that make complete sense retroactively but are realizations that remain cleverly just out of reach until exactly the right moment -- when you realize that yeah, you kinda DID guess that, but had mostly dismissed it until it was confirmed.
        All the the characters grow and develop in a true-to-life manner, priorities change, motivations shift, good ideas lead to horrible outcomes and awful ones work out annoyingly well for terrible people, and grief hits everyone differently and deserves respect however it lands (even when it manifests in meanness or zombification).
   All in all, it's a glorious triumph of story that matters and it's probably the best example I've ever seen in modern times of adult fiction to explain why a story can't just be a story. I used to be firmly in the camp of 'why does it have to mean something to be good?', as many a snot-nosed teenager is when faced with a CritLit assignment... and as many adults default to as Capitalist Exhaustion makes comfort and ease more meaningfully significant than any awakening to consciousness ever could be, in a practical sense. This series is an excellent means by which to demonstrate why it's fundamentally untrue that a good story can ever just be a good story.
      One thing to be aware of is that is is NOT YA Fantasy, it is Adult Fantasy that is appropriate for YA readers. It might seem like splitting hairs, but there is a difference of both form and function between the two.
        There is no real romance in this. Orion's absent most of the time and there's two throw-away-ish sex scenes that only exist because El is an intensely inward-looking character that needs to be brought out of her head and into an awareness of her body. She's also impatient and always looking for cheat-codes. Sex is grounding. She could use drugs, meditation, music, or even an animal-friend (which is one thing she 
does do, but her animal isn't very effective because it's not very needy and only a few inches tall). The sex isn't meaningless, but it's also not romantically meaningful.

     Also, Orion as Manic-Pixie Dream Boy gets disintegrated. He's not a Hero worthy of swooning admiration. NO ONE IS. That's the point. Yeah, it reduces the YA sweeping romance adventure of it, but it's an important comment on how this world creates circumstances of inescapable pressures. You are born into circumstances, instilled with values, given particular skills and tools and experiences that shape your whole existence in ways that render your agency and personality nearly irrelevant. At best, your choices are the result of an attempt to be better than the worst you've seen and your ability to decide who you are isn't much more than cherry picking your favorite aspects of people/characters you've seen until around age 30, and even then it's iffy, you've just finally seen enough (generally) to start noticing broad patterns.
        Orion isn't a shining hero because he's heroic, he's heroic because that's what role he was molded to fill. BUT that doesn't not invalidate his personality, his humble humility is worthy of admiration, his desire to do right not just well is a laudable deviation from his Origin Matrix Ideology, and his relationship with El is a constant decision to revel in her existence that is the truest mark of Love I know. He is human and has choices but they only carry things so far, he's a hero because he tries to be and he's heroic because we want him to be.
       If you feel like this book is different than the other two in the trilogy, you weren't paying attention to the right things. This book is so consistent with the other two it's almost annoying... Until right up at the end when the Fantasy Happy Ending sweeps in to validate the theory of effort based solely on hope. There's no sweep-away story to get lost in here, and there's fewer fantastical distractions to marvel at, there's just a consistent and relentless deconstruction of societal preconceptions.
 
    There are a few things I would have liked more of, however:

           CHLOE. She deserved more attention, more of a substantive role. She could've played far more into this, and allowed for one more false-start investigation to pad out the narrative (it's not even 300 pages and I'm sad there's not enough to really dig my teeth into... it only took me a day to read, not even...). And it would've made Ophelia's villain-reveal have a little more weight. Ophelia's always been a villain, as a mom who clearly did Orion dirty in a number of usual shitty-childhood ways, but the transition from meh-mum to active antagonist could've been better. And we never get to see Chloe react / adjust to the reveal, which I think is a shame... it makes sense in context of El's focus and the plot direction, but I would have liked more.
      Less Repetition. It hits its point home hard. As a conclusion to a series, as the shift between specific circumstances and broad argument, and as a call to action that apparent futility is an insufficient reason not to try, I can see why Novik felt the need to be clear and insistent. But the book is hella short as it is and the repetition made it feel all the shorter.
         Actual Feelings. Yes. El is grieving. And Yes. El is awful at feelings to start with. And so is Liesel. (Hence the moderately unhealthy shortcut of sex). But I would have preferred she have someone with her to force her to stop and talk and FEEL. Chloe, again, could've been useful for this.

Overall? WONDERFUL.
           I am so unbearably pleased with it, that I've bumped this review to the top of my priority list, pushed it to the top of the publishing queue, and spent the last 2 hours actively commenting / critiquing the review of people who missed the point on Goodreads. I'll honestly have like 20 more pages of things to say about this book if I sit with it another week, and I will absolutely be bringing it up in every single class I have for the rest of my life probably (certainly for the foreseeable future), and it is 100% going into the curriculum I'm building (well, technically, only the first one, but this series...).
          If you have any interest in being a human being on any functional level beyond merely existing on the planet for a short while, you absolutely have to read this!
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House of Sky & Breath - Sarah J Maas | Book review

3/6/2022

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Not great, but it's still an improvement over the last few releases...

            Whelp... I'm not mad at it. I set the bar really low going into this one and I'm pleased to say that it has managed to surpass those wary expectations. I'm not actively offended to the point of having to write an angry letter to her publishers / editors / agents...
         Which, despite being the lowest bar ever set, still makes this the best thing SJM has released in years. Seriously, the last time I wasn't actively disappointed by an SJM release since 216 with A Court of Wings & Ruin, way back in 2016.... And even then, I wasn't angry at it, but I also wasn't terribly pleased with it.
House of Sky & Breath is very much a relief, because I'm not actively angry, but it's also still kind of disappointing because even though I'm not offended there's not a lot to like.

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            Now, despite the fact that my over all read is that I didn't like it much at all, there are some good points. The sex wasn't super creepy, for one! (I mean, it was still largely inappropriate and awkwardly squicky, but it wasn't actively glossing over the whole concept of rape... Consent was proactively acquired and reaffirmed throughout). The actual language of the narration was lovely, nothing truly lyrical, but lovely. And the banter was nifty enough to keep the conversations feeling mildly entertaining.
         The most glaring issue with it is that it's too fricken long. It does not need to be 800 pages. Is should not bee 800 pages. First off, the only real reason that it's 800 pages is that there's filler sub-stories about side characters that are followed with absurd detail. And even then, most of those sub-stories shouldn't have even been included in this installment, period. Following Tharion and Ithan and Ruhn, as an interwoven trio of stories, should have been it's own novel, one that might interact with the plot of this one, but can be read separately. In fact, that might actually have made both pieces a lot more interesting and intensely mysterious.
          Instead, we see like 4 or 5 different versions of the same storyline with very limited set-dressing alterations. It's hardly even a 'variation on a theme' kind of thing. There's a whole bunch of angsty, honorable, super-jock, alpha-males facing unwanted / awkward engagements to shy-ish wallflowers with secret bad-assery potential that they've been too sheltered to feel ready to reveal. The stories play out slightly differently, but not with nearly enough unique and significant variation to warrant watching 5 separate iterations.
          Speaking of a lack of variation: there's still ZERO diversity. Like you can call a group of people whatever you want, give them all kinds of different powers and theoretical inter-group rivalries and grudges, but unless you make something about the sects culturally unique, it's not diversity. There's only two body types mentioned for female characters (supermodel / action-hero and pixie-lithe ballerina), and only one for guys (supermodel / action-hero). Nobody's fat. Nobody's short. Nobody's pale enough to have freckles instead of a Cali-perfect suntan, nor dark enough to use any word but 'bronze' to describe their flawless skin tones. Hell, nobody is even the smidge of not utterly pristine biological perfect that is needing glasses with corrective lenses.
             There's a mostly-off-camera solitary gay couple, and a surprise-for-the-shock-value lesbian couple that makes like a 30 second appearance, in flagrante, and there's one mention of a vegetarian being slightly uncomfortable with the vague concept of meat.... and that's it... Seriously, there's not a single, genuine ideological difference between any of the factions that are supposedly diametrically opposed and have been hated enemies for centuries.
           Still on the lack of diversity factor: EVERYBODY'S ROYAL. When ALL your characters are politically significant of more or less equals in technical political standing, basically it means that none of them are facing power-imbalance dynamics that could make being Royal or whatnot interesting. It's special snowflake syndrome, but with political titles.
Also, none of the characters change they take a few, teeny tiny baby steps towards dealing with specific traumas and such, but no one actually changes through the narrative, they reveal that they'd been changed by the magic of insta-love, but none of them actually, visible evolve in any notable manner. And Bryce is an idiot about throwing her royal title around like it's Harley Quinn's hammer and is appalled when no one else is surprised that her continuous stupid choices led to horrible consequences.
           It's just boring.
           And beyond that, the bore-factor is ramped up by the utter lack of stakes. 
         There's a period of interest, when we're caught up in looking for a lost, potentially super-powerful kid. But that plot-line gets buried under the layers of other-people-with-awkward-engagements sandwich and it resolves pretty quickly (all told, that plotline probably takes like 300 pages, max, to run from start to finish). The rest of it is a search for a vague secret, a secret that no one involved even manages to care about without outside agents acting full-on deus ex machina to prompt investigation. There's even a moment with Bryce addresses the lack of Endgame, but it settles with a deeply unsatisfying conclusion of 'search for truth, for sake of truth'. 
          And the secrets that get 'revealed' are painfully dull. I seriously didn't realize that the 'secrets' had been revealed when I read them. I honestly thought it was a bit of framing as a reminder for the current status quo that could he altered in a paradigm shift of wow, that's unexpected and dramatic... and instead we just got, yeah, that's the status quo as it currently exists... No life-altering hidden truth. Just the curtain coming back on the obvious machinations of the current world, most of which could be guessed at by even a half-savvy reader with a few poli-sci or electrical engineering podcasts under their belt. I did like the lure bit of the secret reveal, but it's like showing up to a birthday party for the cake and just being given a particularly neatly shaped bit of a flower made of icing.
      Beyond all that? The whole army from hell thing? And the super-badass female who doesn't want the responsibility of rule but somehow earns the devotions of an abused super-powerful, military famous and respected male? With a cabal of super gorgeous, super powerful, politically significant friends? With a random bad-ass maybe-dragon?
       WE HAVE SEEN THIS STORY BEFORE.... AND I'M GETTING BORED WITH IT.
       Fortunately, there's nothing in this that I'm actively angry about (though, I'll admit, my threshold for what counts as angry is way higher for this author's work than for that of any other, so I probably should be angry about some things, but I'm sticking to my guns and letting it go unless it's actively harmful to real people (like the vile nonsense of A Court of Silver Flames).
      (Okay, that's a lie. I AM actively angry about the way Male and Female are the exclusive references to both gender presentation and biological sex. Like my Trans and Fluid friends are still people, yo.... And no one should simply BE their gender or their biology, personhood is significant without a shred of reproductive potential... But I've decided to pick battles I feel actively endanger safety and while casual erasure is damaging on some level, the mishandling of PTSD in Silver Flames WILL cause some dumbass reader to trigger some unfortunate soul into self-harm, possibly suicide).
        SO.
        I do NOT recommend it. 
        I WILL actively warn my clients against it. 
      And I CANNOT whip up any BS about it as a decent showing that I can ignore while reserving judgement on the whole series. 
       This series is crap. End of story.
       It's sloppy and insulting and pathetic; and it treats the reader like a pitiable, ignorant, idiotic little child.

     I will probably read the 3rd one, when it eventually comes out, simply because I can't reasonably hate on a book I haven't read and still look like a genuine authority, but I likely won't make it a priority read.
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Nightfall (Keepers #6) - Shannon Messenger

7/14/2021

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Date Read: June 16th, 2021
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Final Score: 8 / 10 !

​          This was yet another LOVELY installment in the Keeper of the Lost Cities series! This was a dramatic improvement on the 5th book, mainly for how the installment actually matters on its own rather than simply as a stepping stone towards the Endgame.
           The increasing complexity of how the adults in this series relate to each other is really becoming an amazing display of awareness that is a GREAT means of helping young readers learn to understand grown-ups as people rather than as magical-all-knowing entities who have achieved a state of 'completion'. Grown-ups make mistakes, and they have emotions that cloud their judgement, and they act in ways that seem irrational because you don't fully understand where they're coming from... It's something that takes kids a long time to understand and something that is explicitly commented on in this novel, discussed in great detail at varied intervals that allow for kids to legitimately begin absorbing the lesson alongside their middle-grade protagonists.
          The plot twists developed in this novel are fantastic. It takes on several necessary new-turn developments without becoming predictable and still works in a good few deeply unexpected twists! I LOVE the new characters we get introduced to, and I ADORE the new characterizations of familiar faces we'd thought we knew.
             The story has developed complexity to the point of requiring multiple threads of storyline ongoing all at once, and it times out perfectly with the plot-device of teaching the protagonists the nuanced lesson of needing to delegate tasks to keep their heads above water. We're just at the edge of how complicated a book can before it gets too confusing, but perfectly well managed to help young audiences keep all the details straight. It's becoming a REALLY good transition into Young Adult and I absolutely love it!

             I will DEFINITELY be picking up the next installment ASAP!
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Rule of Wolves - Leigh Bardugo | Book Review

6/18/2021

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Date Read: June 6th, 2021
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​Final Score: 9.5 / 10 !
          This is one that I absolutely knew I was going to tremendously enjoy and, having now finished reading it, I have been 100% proven correct. It's definitely a delight to read and an extremely worthwhile addition to the Grisha Verse!
           The first and most important thing to mention about this book is that it is another example in YA of how to write a war that actually functions like war in real life. It's tragic that so few YA writers seem to do any research at all into that subject matter, especially considering how many YA novels are focused on it, but it's the way things are and I'd like to change it. Which starts with lavishing praise onto writers who take the time to really do the work.
            This is an exceptional look at how the process of war, and the threat of it, actually functions as an influence across all levels of society and how it is never, in any circumstances, confined to the powers actually involved in active conflict. You don't need a massive universe with 40 counties all vying for world domination, but you do need to ensure that all the countries that exist in a given reality do something to address the impending turmoil of open warfare. It was even a very accurate look at how certain players, kings and commanders and such, get pulled off the field because to lose them would be to create upheaval that a given force could not adequately recover from (it has nothing to do with them being less useful in battle, or too good a leader to risk losing, it's the simple fact of transitional turmoil that makes them too important to be unstable) and it goes effectively into the personal frustrations that such a thing causes for both good leaders and bad ones.
               This story also goes into spycraft with excellent accuracy in regards to how it affects the psychologies of everyone involved, as well as looking at how effective / ineffective it can be (and how a lot of how things pan out, whether for better or worse, is usually less to do with intentional action and more to do with relentless effort to keep the story spinning). It really got into the nitty gritty of it with exceptional clarity being given to the moral quandaries that come hand in hand with doing bad things for a good cause.
                The one thing that DID bother me a little is almost negligible: it was simply how they kept referring to Nikolai as 'Highness'. It's a thing I had noticed in King of Scars, but he was such a new king I felt it was ignorable, but by this point he should be solidly established as a 'Majesty'... Though I have seen it translated as such in some Russian lit, so maybe it's a Russian thing I'm not familiar with (I has simply assumed that the address translated strangely). Idk.
                 Anyway, plot-wise, the story developed with some EXCELLENT twists and turns that I was not expecting and yet fit within the narrative as part of a perfectly natural evolution. This one improved upon King of Scars by validating some of the boring bits in that novel without laboriously lingering over the rationales, it simply employed the results of what happened then into a present moment (with just enough recap to keep a reader up to speed, but not so much that the time it took to read the pervious installment felt wasted).
               The character development was also top notch. The admissions that anger comes from fear, that guilt is just a need for control, and that love and friendship are not things that can be affected by rationality or attempted decision-making are all wonderful and expose themselves within each and every character individually. Every character has a distinct arc of development that carries them through the motions of the main plot as a slap-dash combination of their individual stories. Zoya's development, in particular, was fantastic. I never really liked her until this one. I stopped disliking her in King of Scars but WOW did she blossom into someone awesome here (I think she's now in my top 3 of character faves for the whole series).
               Honestly, Zoya's development in this is just so far beyond exceptional that it truly makes this book a marvel. I know that it's a bit unfair to judge books on a comparative basis, but I just have to point out that Zoya's handling in this book is about 50 billion times more elegant and well-crafted than Nesta's handling in A Court of Silver Flames (which is a review I'll have up in full next week). Zoya and Nesta are both extremely angry characters with razor sharp edges and anger issues that bubble up to cover feelings of inadequacy and a soul-deep fear of pain and loss. They're both grieving lives they used to know, and suffering through a crude and unpleasant adjustment to living with trauma. From their similiar circumstances, they require similar methods to help them heal. Nesta's story follows a perfect guideline of How NOT to Handle a Person with PTSD, and is frankly 700 pages of dangerously irresponsible drivel (that doesn't work) and it wraps up in a last 200 pages with a shorthand version of what happened to help Zoya start to heal scrunched up awkwardly at the end like Maas got yelled at by a psychologist. Meanwhile Zoya's journey takes place at an even-keeled pace across the entire (much more succinct novel) and it starts right from the beginning with addressing what is healthy vs unhealthy in terms of coping mechanisms -- all while dealing with protagonists who are younger (and therefore more entitled to handle things poorly). Bargudo does an EXCELLENT job and that fact has certainly catapulted this book into my top 25 of all time!
              Over all, it was extremely well done. I will say that it was not quite life-changing, which several of Bardugo's books have been, but it was definitely one for the top 25 I've read ever, and top 10 for having read in the last decade (or rather it's the one to kick off the new list for this new decade). I am VERY excited about where this is going to lead the Grisha Verse as the series continues to develop!
(One other thing I understand but disagree with: the next one is currently termed Six of Crows #3, and it makes sense why with how exactly Kaz and his crew become embroiled in what must happen for the next stage to unfold, but it's NOT a Book 3... you can't read them in 1, 2, 3 order.... It should be a separate duology or trilogy or something, making title reference to Six of Crows, but not being part of it. Like maybe 'Five of Crows', since Matthias is dead, or perhaps 'Seven of Crows' to make note of Wylan and Hanne's now being tightly involved... honestly, idk, but it's not just Book 3...).
                  ​Still, I do absolutely LOVE this one and highly recommend it to all audiences!
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An Ember in the Ashes - Sabaa Tahir (Book Review)

5/20/2021

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Date Read: December 30, 2015
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 Final Score:  2  /  10

Welp... Not my favorite...

           When I started this book I was really excited about it. As a fantasy world purportedly based on ancient Rome, it sounded like my bread and butter. But I was quickly disappointed with the world building. It IS Rome-based. But it's just the bland brutality and bloodlust of it, there's no culture. There's nothing of the high society elegance that Rome prided itself on, there's nothing on the intellectual innovation of the Empire, on their technology or philosophy or eccentricity, there's nothing but blood and ruin. Not only is it an excessively brutal universe, but the separation of Martial and Scholar is one I find rather insulting to the Roman Empire and to the Imperial concept as a whole. And none of the love-ish story lines were very convincing. There were moments of spark and heat and that giddy little flutter of fluff, but only moments, nothing sustained. None of the characters grew or changed very much and what DID evolve within them only happened within the last hundred pages.
           Literally everything in this book that people have said is great about it was done a thousand times better in Winner's Curse than it was here...
               It was alright, over all. It picked up significantly 2/3 through, and by the end I actually enjoyed the read. The first half at least was a slog of this was done better elsewhere and jeez these kids are annoying... None of the characters believes in the Empire, none of them believe in the Stories of the Tribes until well after they're proven true... There's no clash of culture because none of them actually HAVE a culture that they cling to... The most interesting character is a chick from the Tribes who shows up for one dance and one off-stage conversation and then disappears again, presumably to reappear with a more prominent role in the sequel... Honestly, I was very disappointed in this book, but it is nonetheless a decent read. I wouldn't recommend it, but I wouldn't caution firmly against it either.
               The main redeeming quality comes from realizing that it's not a story set in ancient Rome. It's a story set in an odd parallel world where the Taliban has Rome-like dominance of an ancient world facsimile... 
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