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[atreeofbooks]

The Painted Man, by Peter V. Brett

This book... was not good. I kind of didn’t have high expectations going in - but I’d seen some good reviews of it, and I thought the concept was interesting so I thought I’d give it a go - but... it was not good. And there are FOUR more of them, god. 

Let’s see. This book was set in a fantasy world, where demons rise from the Core of the earth every night and slaughter everything in their path basically. Humans must cower inside every night in houses protected by defensive wards which are the only thing that repels the demons. It’s not a bad concept, really, and I think it could have been good, but the execution fell so flat. 

First off, the world-building. The world-building was not that well fleshed out besides what was immediately necessary for the plot. But what was annoying is that a lot of the world building that was there, was clearly based very strongly on elements from our own world. Like, first of all, they have a biblical equivalent, the Canon, with a Christlike “Deliverer”, who people argue about whether was mortal or not. But the worst offending was the Krasians, a race of people who live in the middle of the desert, who were blatantly based on Islamic culture. I just think it’s lazy writing, if you are doing a fantasy series, to base so much of your world-building on elements of our own world. Like what am I reading fantasy for if you’re gonna do that? I mean, it’s one thing if you are trying to make some metaphoric, social commentary etc by borrowing themes from our own world to use in fantasy, but you have to be able to do that really well for it to work, and there was none of that here anyway. 

There were also elements of the world-building that didn’t really make sense to me. For example, the demons rise from the ground, but we hear that in cities etc there are warded cobblestones or something which prevents the demons from rising within the city walls. Great, all well and good, but why then do demons not rise in the warded circles that people create outside directly on the ground, like the messenger circles? This was very unclear to me. 

The characters - they were all quite flat, unfortunately. Arlen was probably the most interesting character, but I don’t think that’s because he was well written,  it’s just that he was the one who was doing the most interesting things, and through him that we learnt about most of the world-building. Rather too good at everything he does, and becomes part supernatural being by the end of the book. 

The main female character was Leesha, who was the most beautiful girl in her village, and every male character who she encountered, literally every male character who wasn’t related to her, fell in love with her. Eye roll. She was also stuck with the role of Herb Gatherer, which is a rather unfortunately gendered profession. A large part of her storyline revolved around which man she was going to lose her ‘flower’ to, and then she’s gang raped, unhappily. 

Then we have Rojer, and all he does is play the fiddle really well. So well that he can keep off demons apparently. Like no one ever discovered that demons like music before. 

Another thing about the characters, from a world-building perspective, the author tried to give them ‘fantasy’ names, but again most of them were just names from our world spelled in a weird way. 

The plot - there was a lot of time leaps, in which you’re like, oh this character is suddenly a legendary demon fighter, and oh this character is a master Herb gatherer, etc. I found the plot elements to be quite weak as well. Like we hear about the lost fighting wards at the beginning of the book, but Arlen manages to stumble across them in some ancient ruins like only half way through the book, without any difficulty at all. He then tattoos the fighting wards onto his body, and that also makes me wonder, like, did no one ever think of tattooing defensive wards onto their bodies? Like surely that would have worked just as well from a protective standpoint. 

People were constantly doing dumb things - like I swear so many people wouldn’t get into fights with demons, if the characters weren’t always going out and doing things right before the sun goes down, or getting up early to gather herbs before the sun is risen etc, like wouldn’t they know not to do that, thanks. 

Also characters would often make decisions that were out of character or make no sense. For example, Arlen’s passionate about helping the human race fight back against demons, but after discovering the fighting wards, he just mopes around the wilderness fighting demons by himself for years instead of sharing them with the rest of the cities. Like, I get that when he tried to share them with the Krasians it went badly, but that was only because he was a foreigner, and there’s no reason why the other cities wouldn’t listen to him. 

Furthermore, some of Leesha’s decisions were very questionable. She rightfully rejects her betrothed Gared after he bragged to everyone that they had had sex when they hadn’t,  states she would rather give herself to the demons than marry him, and spends years waiting for the right man to come along to give her ‘’’flower’’’ to. And then all of a sudden, she thinks, oh, maybe I should lose my virginity to a man who tried to rape her every night when they were travelling together. That is no better than Gared, that is WORSE than Gared. Luckily she doesn’t go through with it, but then a few days later she happens to be gang raped, which is just typical. Furthermore, just a couple of days after she is gang raped, she initiates sex with Arlen, and its like really? Like I don’t know that she’d be ready for that quite so soon, like yikes, sounds painful. 

This book I think tries to be a bit feminist in some parts - like there’s this whole bit which is like calling out the sexual double standards between women and men, and saying that it doesn’t matter if you have sex before marriage. And there’s a bit at the end where women join the fighting against the demons which was nice. But the problem, is these bits are overshadowed by the book as a whole, which really puts women in very sex stereotyped roles, as well as focusing way too much on Leesha’s ‘’’flower’’’ after saying that it ‘doesn’t matter’.

I don’t think I’ll read the rest of the FOUR books in this series, I struggled enough getting through this one. I enjoyed ranting about it after I finished though. 

[atreeofbooks]

The Waste Lands (Dark Tower III), by Stephen King

I found this book an enjoyable continuation of the Dark Tower series. This is a strange series - its almost absurdist in parts, but I find the quest for the Dark Tower to be very compelling. One of my favourite parts was Roland’s explanation of the structure of his world as he was taught it - that the world was ringed by twelve portals, each guarded by a Guardian in the form of an animal. Each portal is connected by the Beams - which appear to be conduits of energy and life force - they remind me a bit of ley lines. All things serve the Beams, as we learn. Where the Beams intersect in the centre of the world, stands the Dark Tower. We still don’t know much about the Tower itself - (well, except from what I’ve learnt from other books), but it’s interesting to learn more about the way King’s universe works. I also liked that one of the guardians, which is referenced frequently throughout this book is a Turtle - which I hope is  the giant Turtle at the end of IT.

I also liked how Roland and Jake were driven to the brink of insanity by their conflicting memories - the memories on the one hand of Jake’s death have been corrupted by the events of the last book - as they killed the man who pushed Jake to his death in his own world, meaning that Jake never died and met Roland, etc. However, I felt there was a minor plot hole - in the sense that both Roland and Jake were haunted by their conflicting memories - but no one else was. Surely the people who knew Jake in New York would have conflicting memories as well - of Jake being both dead and alive. However this didn’t seem to be the case. 

This series also seems to rely a bit too much on its characters just Knowing things, but being unable to explain why they know them. Like all the characters at some point, just Know what they have to do next, or just Know something that they shouldn’t be able to know, just because it’s convenient to the plot. King at least kind of writes in an explanation for this - it’s all the force of ka presumably, and the power of the group’s ka-tet, but I do think using this too often verges on lazy writing. 

As I said, parts of this story veer into the absurdist - the latter half of the story focuses on the group of gunslingers attempting to find a sentient train, named Blaine the Mono (as he’s a monorail), who can take them through the Waste lands. Blane turns out to be slowly going insane, murderous, suicidal, and obsessed with riddles. I mean, yes this was strange, but it was an enjoyable read nonetheless, and I guess I respect King’s unwillingness to be tied down by conventions. I’m interested to see if the series will continue to follow such unusual plotlines... 

I also wanted to comment on the treatment of women. As I’ve noted previously, King often doesn’t write women very well - when he writes them at all, which isn’t that much in comparison to male characters. When he does write a strong female character, he often ruins it by writing in horribly misogynistic scenes for them - see treatment of Beverly Marsh in IT. Here, I give King credit for deciding to make one of his gunslingers a black disabled woman - and for the most part Susannah is written quite strongly - her disability doesn’t get in the way of her being a good gunslinger for example. While she is technically a ‘love interest’ as she is in a relationship with one of the other protagonists, Eddie, this doesn’t subsume her entire character - she is an independent protagonist in her own right, which is good. However, seemingly so often with King, where he has well written female characters, their contributions to the plot end up being, well, often of a sexual nature. In this book, there’s a scene with a demon, and in order to keep the demon off of Eddie, who is doing something important for the plot, Susannah has to.... have sex with it. I honestly wasn’t even surprised.  As soon as there was talk of someone having to have sex with a demon, I was like, yup, its going to be Susannah, and I wasn’t wrong. I mean, to be fair, I think Roland also had to have sex with a demon in the first book, but I felt like the scene with Susannah was more prolonged and it focused more on her discomfort. Oh and she also might be pregnant with the demon baby, so there’s that too. Did I mention this series verges on the absurdist, haha? 

Anyway, I’m definitely interested in seeing how the rest of the series goes- and I’ll pay special attention to Susannah, and see if she’s treated to any more uncomfortably gendered/sexual scenes. 

[atreeofbooks]

The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier

I got this book out of the library to read myself, but I ended up reading it to my girlfriend as we had nothing else to read. I was a bit disappointed in it, to be honest. It’s not a bad concept - set in a Catholic boy’s high school, one boy refuses to participate in the annual chocolate sale, and incurs the wrath of both the faculty, and the mysterious student organisation, The Vigils. However its execution was ultimately quite mediocre, unfortunately. I think this is because the characters were really, seriously lacking in depth - and the plot wasn’t good enough to save it.

There were a lot of characters, but we didn’t really spend enough time with each of them to really understand them, or know their motivations. Basically no female characters in this book either - kind of understandable as it was a boy’s school, but still. Where girls were mentioned, it was because the teenage boys were ogling them in a highly sexual manner - I don’t know if this was just put in there as an attempt to be “realistic”, but it didn’t add much to the Reading Experience. 

The ending was quite abrupt and depressing too. Like, I’m okay with depressing endings, but I wasn’t even sure what the point of it was meant to be. Like, the whole tagline of the book was “do I dare disturb the universe?” or something like that - and Jerry, the protagonist who refuses to sell the chocolates, thinks this to himself, because he has a poster which says this on his locker. And then at the end of the book, after being beaten down (physically and spiritually) by the rest of the student body - its basically just like - no, don’t disturb the universe, it’s not worth it. And then the book ends. And it’s just like, okay, well that’s just a depressing commentary on the hopelessness of mankind. 

There is a sequel, which I am also in the middle of reading to my girlfriend - so I wonder if this message gets revised a little, in the sequel? Perhaps with a more positive spin? We’ll find out I guess! 

[atreeofbooks]

Black House, by Stephen King, and Peter Straub

I have finally finished reading the last of the Dark Tower tie in novels - as indicated online at any rate - and can now plunge ahead with the rest of the main series! 

This book was the sequel to The Talisman, a book I read earlier in the year. It featured the main character, Jack, all grown up, as an extremely talented cop, who is forced out of retirement when a cannibalistic child murderer begins to prey upon his small town. He has forgotten all about his adventures in the Territories when he was twelve, but these memories come back to him as he tracks the killer who seems to have suspicious ties to that strange, other world. 

I thought this book was an improvement on The Talisman - it was a tighter story with a more interesting plot. You really have to read both though - and I’m really glad I realised that Black House was a sequel because I was originally going to read that one first. This book also had more Dark Tower references than the last which is always interesting. I feel like from reading these side books I have gleaned a bit more information about the plot of the main series than I perhaps am meant to know about at the point I am in the main series, but it’s nothing too spoilery. This book probably revealed the most out of all the ones I’ve read, so I’m glad I read it last. 

There was again a bit of a dearth of female characters - this time there were Two (2) female characters of significance - with others in very minor roles. The Female Characters of Significance were both love interests, of course, a bit shoehorned in, of course, and with no real depth or interests or personality, of course, but at least it was an improvement on the first book? I guess?

It was a good read though, nonetheless. The concept of the Black House was really cool as well - love the idea of this sprawling mansion of terror which is bigger on the inside than the out. Jack is maybe a bit Too perfect of a character - LA superstar cop, unbelievably wealthy, handsome, solves all the mysteries with ease that leave the local cops baffled (literally he comes on the case and the murder is solved within like 2 days) - but I forgive him. 

Anyway I’ve already started reading Book 3 of the Dark Tower series which I’m liking a lot so I’ll write about that one soon! 

[atreeofbooks]

Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton

This is the second book I’ve read by Jo Walton, and the second book by her I’ve really loved! 

This book had elements of the Victorian period in it - but with a twist - all the characters were dragons. This was actually great, and the worldbuilding was really good. There were elements of our society - the dragons were religious, they fashioned hats for themselves, some kept farms etc, and had a strict class system, with differing titles based on rank. However, the dragons also lived in caves, slept on gold - hoards, and they ate their relatives after death, which is essential as it makes them grow longer. They also engage in eugenics - as they eat the week dragonets when they are born for “the improvement of dragonkind”. I did love how Jo Walton managed to make the dragons seem so familiar but so alien at the same time - she made them relatable but never too human. 

Apparently dragons have super strict gender roles though, who knew. These gender roles weren’t really challenged unfortunately, but it was part of the worldbuilding, which made it interesting, and I think Walton was trying to go for a kind of Victorian era story, so I’m not complaining too much. The book was largely female focused - the two characters with the most focus were sisters, Selendra and Haner.

Again it was very readable - had a great flow. The worldbuilding was revealed to us skilfully as well - we were definitely shown things, not told things. Although something I wish we had heard a bit more about were the colour of the dragon’s scales. It was difficult to imagine what many of the dragons looked like at first, as many of them weren’t described for a long time, or at all. There appeared to be rules about dragon’s scale colour - ‘maiden’ dragons are gold, and they blush pink when a male approaches them sexually, and then turn red once bearing children. Male dragons weren’t described so well, but they appeared to be either black or bronze, generally. Unclear if they could be other colours too. Dragons could also be green, but this was a sign of weakness, and any dragon born green would be soon eaten. Some of the main characters were described quite well- Haner and Selendra for instance, but others, like the brothers, weren’t clearly described at all at any point. Minor gripe though.

Very enjoyable book, and I will definitely be reading more by Walton. 

[atreeofbooks]

Maurice, by E.M. Forster

I read this book quite a while ago, and I had thought I had already written a review of it, but apparently I haven’t? Or else it has been mysteriously deleted. 

Anyway - loved this book! This novel was written in the early 1900s, but was never published until after the author’s death, as he knew that a gay romance (with a happy ending no less) couldn’t have been published during that time. E.M. Forster was a renowned writer during his time, and we’re so lucky to have gotten a surprise gay literary novel about being gay in the early 1900s. 

I liked how they had to resort to dropping gay cultural references into the conversation to subtly hint at their sexuality - shows that nothing’s changed ahahaha. Clive’s all to Maurice - “what do you think of Plato’s Symposium? hint hint”, and then Maurice keeps comparing himself to Oscar Wilde as I recall.

I did think it was an interesting and odd choice how Clive, Maurice’s first love interest, just happened to “turn straight” half way through the book for no apparent reason, and decide to get married and cease his relationship with Maurice. It may have been meant a as a conscious choice to stay in the closet and live a Repressed life - but it wasn’t really written that way in the book - it was literally written like he turned straight. Another thing, I didn’t realise at first while I was reading that Clive and Maurice weren’t having sex- I assumed while reading that they were having sex but that E.M. Forster was just being Coy about it because of it being the 1900s and all. But then when they break up and then Maurice goes on to actually have sex with his new gamekeeper boyfriend, Alec, it becomes quite clear haha. 

What I really liked is how Maurice learns to overcome his class privilege and goes from caring greatly about his status and position, to the point at the end of the book where he’s ready to give up everything and live in the woods with a gamekeeper. I also loved the concept of the ‘greenwood’, the pristine forests of England of old, where Maurice and Alec could be free to live their lives as they wish.

The book was also dedicated to a “happier year” which I thought was nice - and hopeful. 

[atreeofbooks]

Among Others, Jo Walton

This was a really enjoyable and unique read, which I’m really glad I stumbled across. I came across Jo Walton as I was reading some reviews of a book I read earlier this year, Random Acts of Senseless Violence, and I found people mentioning they’d read the book because Jo Walton had liked it and written a piece about it. I read her review of the book, and reading a few comments by people, ordered Among Others from the library as I thought it sounded interesting. I try not to read too much about a book before I begin reading it though, so I wasn’t too certain about what I was getting into. When I picked up the book from the library, I had a conversation with the librarian, who saw me checking it out, and told me it was a really good book, which was really nice of him, and I asked him about other Jo Walton books and he told me about a couple. It was even nicer in retrospect considering the content of the book, which is all about people making connections over books that they enjoy. 

The first unique thing about this book that I really appreciated was that it was obviously written for people who love books, and specifically sci fi/fantasy. The book is written in diary format, and the main character, Mori, is an avid reader who writes just as much about the books she is reading as about the events that are going on in her life. She constantly updates us on the books she is reading, what she wants to read, her thoughts on the books she has loved, and the problems with books she hasn’t. There isn’t often much context for this discussion, so if you aren’t familiar with the works in question you won’t understand everything that is written - on one hand it seems to assume a degree of familiarity, but on the other hand it never goes so far as to spoil, or say too much about the books for those who haven’t read them. At least I didn’t think so. I hadn’t read many of the books discussed, mostly because they all had to have been written before 1979/1980 which was when the book was set. Not that this should be much of an excuse haha. I’d read Tolkien, obviously, and also the Narnia books, one of Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern books, as well as Mary Renault’s The Last of the Wine. Speaking of Mary Renault it was interesting that her books featured so much, as she writes  historical fiction rather than sci-fi/fantasy, which most of the rest of the books are. I’m glad she was though, I must read more Mary Renault. It also made me want to read more older sci-fi/fantasy, especially Le Guin, and also Vonnegut maybe - I shall definitely pursue this. Anyway as I mentioned earlier, I liked how a large part of this book was about people making connections through love of books - I loved seeing Mori making friends at her sci-fi book club, and with her school librarian, etc. I can understand how some may be alienated by the constant discussions of books they may not have read or even heard of, but I’m the kind of person who always really appreciates it, even when I haven’t read the books in question.  

Another thing about the book which I really liked was that the book was set in what you would probably class as the aftermath of the main conflict. Mori, along with her twin, has saved the world, prevented her mother, who is a witch, from becoming a dark queen, and she has also suffered the losses typical of such an achievement. Her twin sister died in the process, and Mori is left permanently crippled, having to use a cane while walking. The book is about her life in the aftermath, running away from her mother, reuniting with her father who left when she and her sister were babies, going to boarding school, making friends and finding herself, and dealing with everything that has passed, grieving for her sister, etc. I really liked this concept - the book never even goes into that much detail about what happened with her mother and her sister, who died, but I like the idea of someone trying to settle back into normal life after the main action has passed, there’s something sweetly poignant about it. 

I also really like how the magic was depicted in this book - not like it is in stories, but always with plausible deniability. It made it all seem much more real, like it could just slide into everyday life, rather than being jarring. Mori describes how you are never sure if magic has worked, or if it is just a coincidence, because it works in everyday kind of ways. She also describes the magic in everyday objects, like things people have used a lot so that it has become connected to them. The fairies, which Mori sees frequently, are also lovely, and I like how they are slightly sinister as well by the end, it fits with the idea of fairies/magic not always being good for humans. I liked how Walton emphasised that magic was dangerous and should not be used for one’s own personal gain, but only to prevent harm. We are shown how it is harmful to use magic to make too many changes in your own life, and it is better if you make them happen on your own - and we see the contrast between Mori, and her mother, who uses her power for her own benefit. 

This book also had a really good narrative voice, it was very readable, with likeable and realistic characters, and had a great setting - English all girls boarding school, interspersed with scenes of the Welsh valleys. It didn’t have a traditional plot/narrative in the sense that with most books you can kind of get a feeling of where you are in the story, with events building up to a climax etc. This book wasn’t like that - I wouldn’t have known at all where I was in the story if I couldn’t have seen how many pages there was left. There was a climax, of a sort, right at the very end, though as climaxes go it was reasonably minor. Because of this there did seem no real reason for the book to end where it did - but the last entry was suitably final. But I don’t see why Mori would stop keeping her diary, so perhaps she does keep writing, we just don’t get to read it. 

I did have two problems with this book. Other people might see these as minor problems in the grand scheme of things, but personally I see them as quite significant problems which need to be addressed. 

The first problem I had was the scene where Daniel, Mori’s father, who she has reunited with after running away from her mother, tries to have sex with her while he is drunk, and Mori pushes him away. The issue with this scene is that after one diary entry detailing what happened, and Mori’s mixed feelings about it, it is never brought up again, and it happens quite early on in the book too. Except for this scene, Daniel is written as a likeable character, even after the incident occurs, and it does not seem to impact Mori’s relationship with him, or her feelings about him, in any way whatsoever, and it leaves me thinking, what was the point? What was the point in having an otherwise likeable character do something so horrible, and then never bring it up again? The idea of writing a character who tries to sleep with his 15 year old daughter as ‘likeable’ is very out of the ordinary. I understand that people are not as black and white as fiction often makes out - and someone who does something reprehensible like this may also present as a ‘nice’ person in other parts of his life, and also do genuinely kind things for people, and that this may be hard for the people close to them to reconcile. I think it might have been interesting if Walton had been aiming to explore this tension, and unpack the relationship between Mori and her father in more detail - her feelings about the incident, what may have caused her father to behave in this way, and analyse how this kind of thing changes the relationship between people, and whether you can or should have a relationship with someone after they do something like that, and what boundaries should be in place, etc. However, none of this is present in the book. You’d think Mori might at least think about it again, and it might alter her perceptions of some of his actions? I mean, we definitely are meant to see Daniel’s character as flawed - he ran away from her mother, and while Mori sees this as understandable, she believes it is inexcusable to abandon babies, especially with someone like her mother. He also smokes and drinks a lot - has all the vices, according to Mori. Mori also believes he is magically controlled by his three half sisters to an extent - that they won’t let him leave the house too much and do certain things. Mori’s relationship with him is a bit awkward, and she doesn’t see him as a proper father, which is why she calls him Daniel, and she refers to him as a terrible father frequently. I think we are meant to see him as kind of ‘pathetic’ in a way? But despite this he does many genuinely likeable things during the book, and we get the sense that he truly cares about Mori despite his failures in the parenting department. There is an interesting diary entry where Mori is talking about a performance of Shakespeare’s The Tempest which she saw with her class, and her problem with the performance was that Prospero was played by a woman. One of her issues with this was that she felt that Prospero’s relationship with his daughter didn’t work well if Prospero is a woman, because with a man you get the sense that he is trying his best even if he isn’t doing a good job, but with a woman the same behaviour makes her seem too neglectful and uncaring to be likeable at all. (I haven’t seen the Tempest by the way). Mori does point out and recognises the contradictions in this - and it is evidently very unfair - but this is kind of the way we are encouraged to see her father, I think - he is terrible at parenting but he does his best so we are led to like him even if it isn’t enough. Anyway I talked about this longer than I meant to, but I do have a huge problem that we are led to like a character who tried to sleep with his 15 year old daughter, because this is a serious thing, and it is given neither the weight nor sufficient exploration in the plot to justify this event occurring. 

The other problem I had with the book was with Gill’s character. Gill is a girl who goes to boarding school with Mori, and she’s a lesbian - the only lesbian or gay character (unless you count Auntie Olwen, which I don’t because she was only mentioned, and wasn’t actually in the book). Gill takes chemistry with Mori, likes reading science essays and wants to be a scientist, and is kind to Mori. At first I was like, nice! Lesbian character, who can be friends with Mori. But as I kept reading, I felt like the author didn’t really handle Gill’s character very well. A brief summary of Gill’s plot line: Gill talks to Mori on the bus from town, and asks if she was meeting boys, Mori says ‘no that’s tacky’. Gill is friendly with Mori, and while Mori likes her initially she begins to be ‘creeped out’ because she feels like Gill wants something. Gill comes to her dormitory to lend her a book or something, and puts her arm around Mori, Mori jumps up and tells her to leave, which she does. The other girls in the dormitory see and are homophobic about it. Mori tells Gill that she just wants to be friends and doesn’t want a physical relationship with her. Gill says but you said you didn’t like boys. Mori says that doesn’t mean she likes girls. Gill’s only further appearance in the plot is to act all contemptuous and snarky to Mori whenever she sees her with boys in the future. I mean really, what was the point of this plotline? I know not all gay and lesbian characters have to be portrayed as good - they are flawed, just the same as everyone. It is nice when there is more than one gay/lesbian character in a book so there can be a range of representation. Unfortunately this was not the case here, and there was no depth to this character at all, and I have a hard time understanding why the author chose to even include it - Gill’s storyline had no real resolution - we just never really see her again. It’s not like it had much of an impact on Mori either. It makes me feel like the purpose was to just to hammer in the fact that, just because Mori is weird and Not Like Other Girls, and doesn’t know how to do make up, doesn’t mean she’s a lesbian or anything. Maybe this is unfair, but when you have weird plot lines like this for no reason, that’s really the impression it leaves. It also pushes the ‘predatory lesbian’ stereotype which is frustrating. Walton doesn’t spend much time developing the characters of Mori’s classmates, as Mori doesn’t feel much of a connection with them. The three which are the most developed are Deirdre, Gill, and Sharon - they’re definitely all shown as flawed - but I feel like Gill gets the worst lot of the three - Mori is properly friends with Deirdre by the end, and seems to be friendly with Sharon. I felt sorry for Gill, it must have been hard to be a lesbian in such an intensely homophobic environment, and she must have been very lonely. Though Mori’s not homophobic herself, all the other girls we see at the school are, even Deirdre who is meant to be quite likeable. Anyway. Justice for Gill, is what I’m really saying here. 

Anyway I’ve written quite a bit now - these were two unfortunate problems in what was otherwise a pretty outstanding book. I’m interested to read more by this author, and definitely read some of the books mentioned in the novel. Jo Walton also is active online, writing about sci-fi/fantasy, and I’m interested to read more of what she has to say - it looks like she has good opinions about Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning, but based on the issues I have in this post, I’m sure there will be areas where we disagree as well! 

[atreeofbooks]

Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer

I read this after seeing the movie adaption, which I had heard was very different to the book. I actually found that I enjoyed the movie far more than the book, which was disappointing as I’d heard the book was a lot better. Perhaps I just enjoyed the version I saw first more. However, you usually find that movies are simplified versions of the books, but in this case I felt like the movie actually made the story more complex. The concept for both the book and film is great, a team of women go on an expedition into Area X, a classified top secret mysterious area of environmental chaos, and are tasked with researching/surveying the area. Past expeditions have occurred - with many ending in disaster. The main character’s husband was on a past expedition and he came back mysteriously changed. This inspires our protagonist to join the next expedition, looking for answers. I really liked how in the book you never knew any of the members of the expedition’s names, they were just referred to by their professions - the psychologist, the anthropologist, the surveyor. The main character was the biologist, and I really appreciated the focus on biology and nature. However, I liked that the movie focused more on the other women, made them more fleshed out characters, and had them survive longer and work together as a team more - the book split them up/killed them off pretty early on. The movie focused more on the expedition element of it - the book was more contemplative, they had already arrived at one of the two destinations, the Tower,  when the book began, and the biologist managed to travel from the Tower to the Lighthouse, very quickly. The movie also was clearer than the book in the sense of explaining what Area X is, and how it changes people. The book was far more mysterious - which can be a good thing, but here I felt it just made the book less compelling, because not as much happened, and when things did happen you didn’t know why. The movie also explored the strange environment much more thoroughly than the book - I guess it’s easier to do visually, but the book only really had the Moaning creature, and the Crawler - but the movie had a myriad of strange creatures. The book did touch on the ‘plant people’ for lack of a better term, but very subtly - the movie did it better. The book had this one great concept that the movie didn’t touch on -  of the inverted Tower, with living walls, and the the mysterious Crawler slowly moving up and down the tower writing ominous biblical sounding passages on the walls, constantly with no rest, and when he finishes each cycle, he begins again, and Area X goes through some kind of change - chaotic period? I liked that - though I was curious, the main character reached the bottom of the tower and saw a mysterious door which was of the same essence as the border of Area X, but she decides not to enter it, and instead turns back - I was curious as to what was behind the door! The book makes the Tower the focal point of Area X, but the movie omits it entirely, and focuses on the lighthouse, as the final destination. The book is only the first in a trilogy, though it can be read as a standalone, so perhaps the movie drew on elements from the other novels - I intend to read those as well. But I kind of want to rewatch the movie now as well.

[atreeofbooks]

Little Sisters of Eluria, Stephen King

This was the other Dark Tower adjacent story I read in the Everything is Eventual short story collection. It wasn’t as good as the title story, but I still enjoyed it - it also dealt with vampires and did it much better than Salem’s Lot did, I felt, it was far more original storytelling. I don’t know why the vampires (who were female) had to have a weird sexual thing for Roland, but I guess I shouldn’t expect anything less from King. 

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Salem’s Lot, Stephen King

This book was okay - I was kind of disappointed by it. It was very readable, as King always is, and it started off well and really drew the reader’s interest into it. I think my problem with the story is that it was a bit too straightforward, not enough plot complexity for me. The concept wasn’t as unique as King usually is either. I’m pretty sure it was only the second book he published, so I will cut him some slack as he was probably still finding his stride. Basically vampire moves to town, begins turning town people into vampires, visting writer protagonist teams up with some locals and kills vampire. The end. I mean there’s more to it than that, but not that much more. I think the problem is that King uses a very traditional kind of vampire as the villain, so the story seems too familiar, just a traditional vampire story really, where King is usually very good at coming up with very unique situations and horror villains, etc. Women characters in this were very sidelined as I have come to expect in King novels as well - there was one central female character, the Love Interest, named Susan, but she dies part way through, and while she’s not terrible, there’s nothing particularly interesting about her. She doesn’t really contribute anything either - she doesn’t have any ideas, she refuses to believe in the vampires at first, and the one independent thing she does try to do, is objectively kind of stupid, she goes up to the Marsden house where the vampire lives by herself without telling anyone, which is contrary to the plan they had all agreed on, and ends up getting killed and turned into a vampire herself. Oh and she meets a 12 year old boy while she’s there, who is described as being much more competent than her, an adult woman, and he ends up taking charge of their expedition into the Marsden house, and he ends up surviving, because he, as a 12 year old boy, is for some reason much more capable than Susan the Adult. And it isn’t just the whole ‘kids are better at fighting monsters’ thing that King is fond of, because it doesn’t apply to Ben, the adult main character - in the final showdown, Ben does everything pretty much and the 12 year old just kind of stands there. And there’s also a bit where Ben, who is Susan’s lover, has to violently kill vampire Susan, and it’s meant to be very emotional for him, and we’re meant to think, oh how terrible, as the reader, though he gets over it pretty quickly. So again we just have her existing to further the male protagonist’s emotional development. I think the best female character I’ve read by King so far has been Beverly Marsh, from IT, though even she is written clumsily at many points, and then he goes and ruins it with That Scene in the sewers which we don’t talk about. I haven’t read any other books by King with a central female protagonist, like Carrie, for example, and I will read those at some point. Also now I’ve finished Salem’s lot, I think I just have one more book to go, Black House, before I’ve finished all of the Dark Tower adjacent novels, and then can go and finish the main Dark Tower series. 

[atreeofbooks]

Pretty Is, Maggie Mitchell

I did not like this book. It started out okay, and actually had a pretty interesting concept, however it wasn’t executed very well, as for most of the book nothing happened, and it got progressively more and more boring, until me and my girlfriend, who I was reading it to, were desperate for it to end. It was about two girls, from different backgrounds, but both smart and pretty, who were abducted by a man when they were, I think twelve, who took them across the country and lived with them in a cabin in the woods for a time - I forget how long, but a reasonably long period of time, before they were found and brought back home. It focuses on the impact it had on these girls and how it made them into who they are as grown ups. They are brought back together as adults, as one of the girls writes a best selling novel based on their experiences as children, and the other girl, who is an actress, is cast to play the role of the police detective in the film. As I said, it’s actually quite a good concept, and what is interesting about it, is that the girls actually go with the man who takes them reasonably of their own free will, like at least they never try to run away, and they never complain or say ‘take me home’, the man never abuses them, other than the act of kidnapping them, and they actually have fond memories of the man, who they call Zed, and the time they spent together in the cabin. We see each of the characters struggle with their conflicting feelings for Zed, and try to discern what kind of person he was, what his motives might have been, why he didn’t try to abuse them, etc. I think somewhere in there is quite an interesting examination of male/female dynamics and the concept of desirability - the girls both fall in love with their captor a little bit, in their own way, and they both grapple with wanting to be ‘desirable’ to him and wanting him to like them, to be his favourite, etc, even though he’s objectively a bad person for kidnapping them. I think this book was an interesting meditation on the way girls are taught to think like this, and how society makes them want to be desirable for men who don’t deserve it. We also see some of the misogynistic views he has towards women, and he gets the girls to read a disturbing poem about a man who kills his lover in order to truly possess her. These were the most interesting bits of the book however, and I’ve summed them up effectively in this short post. The novel just went on and on and on about other stuff that wasn’t of any interest whatsoever. I think it was an attempt to be a character study, but I found both characters quite flat. The author I think tried to to help us understand their characters, but unfortunately the way she did this was by just having large sections of the book telling us about the characters doing mundane daily activities, which is neither interesting, nor very revealing. It was so, so slow moving as well. The book was described as a psychological thriller. There was nothing thrilling about this book.  The interesting bits were almost lost within all the rest which was just slow moving and mundane.

[atreeofbooks]

The Last of the Wine, Mary Renault

I’ve been meaning to read Mary Renault for a while, and I finally got around to reading this one, and I intend to read more of her in the future. I enjoyed this book, I like reading about the classical world, and it was interesting to learn more about some real life people and events from the time period - albeit through a fictional lens. I did feel like this book came off a little flatly - it was good, but it was lacking the spark, the passion, the emotion which would have made it really great. It was a bit too matter of fact I felt, like the events of the story were told one after the other, but I felt like it was really missing something that would have made it truly moving. This might have been in part because the story spanned quite a long period of the main character Alexias’ life, and many events were told about rather quickly, like many battles and fights happened one after the other, and to be honest it was sometimes quite hard to keep track of the events and what was happening. The book was most interesting when it focused on the relationship between characters and their inner thoughts and desires. It was a very subtle book, which I appreciated, and I’m interested to read more by her. 

[atreeofbooks]

The Idiot, Elif Batuman

This was a strange and interesting book, which I both liked and didn’t like. I think I liked it more than I didn’t like it. It was very readable, but didn’t have much of a plot. It is told from the perspective of a girl named Selin, and it is about her first year at Harvard, and the friendship she strikes up with Ivan, an older mathematics student. I liked the way the book was written, it was funny in a depressing kind of way. It seemed to linger on moments of pointlessness or futility, which are so common in everyday life, yet which are often glossed over by most other authors. It gave a lot of attention to little details, and the times when you feel let down by life, or when things just keep happening and you don’t really see the point in them, and you’re searching for some greater meaning, but there just isn’t one. It was also characterised really well - you felt the characters were realistically human - and it was definitely more of a character study than something you’d read for the plot. The first part of the book was Selin studying at Harvard, and then later she goes to teach English in Hungary, on the recommendation of Ivan. I found the first part of the book more relatable as a university student myself - I though the Hungary part was where the book kind of began to drag on a bit, though there were still good parts in it. Ivan was kind of boring though, I felt, like maybe he was meant to be a bit boring, I don’t know. I really liked Selin’s friend, Svetlana, and I wish she had been in it a bit more. Ultimately the book was really well written with good characters, and it was definitely worth reading for these things alone. The lack of a real plot kind of dragged it down a bit, and while I enjoyed the emphasis on the natural pointlessness of much of life, I felt like this kind of left the book itself feeling a bit empty, by the end of it. 

[atreeofbooks]

Random Acts of Senseless Violence, Jack Womack.

This was a pretty cool book - which I devoured very quickly. It’s told from the perspective of a 12 year old girl named Lola living in New York as society as we know it rapidly deteriorates.

The book is written in diary format, and Lola begins writing her entries from her upper middle class apartment in a nice part of New York, however it isn’t long before her family are forced into financial hardship and have to leave their comfortable home for a smaller apartment in a bad neighbourhood. I’m not sure if this was intentional or not but I felt like the book was alluding a little bit to Anne Frank - as it told the story of a young Jewish girl, who keeps a diary while society is falling down around her, while her and her family have to move from their comfortable home into a less desirable location. The reason I felt like this might have been on purpose was that, just as Anne Frank addresses all her diary entries to ‘Kitty’, rather than simply writing ‘Dear Diary’, Lola addresses all her diary entries to, you guessed it, ‘Anne’. 

However the similarities really end there - the story takes a rather different turn to Anne Frank’s story.  Womack never quite gets into the cause of society’s troubles - Lola mentions riots, economic chaos, the assassination of multiple presidents, and the presence of the army in her city, among other things. However because she is 12, the story is told from her youthful perspective, and the main focus is on her life and how she adjusts to the changes she and her family experience during this time, rather than the cause of the events themselves. One could say that it’s lazy writing - to make your protagonist a 12 year old so that you don’t have to go into detail with your world-building and spell out exactly why society is collapsing - but in this case I really liked the way that it was handled. To not quite know the cause of the chaos made the story all the more sinister - and relatable, like it could happen in our society at any time. 

I was also happy to find out that the protagonist was a lesbian - something I didn’t know going in, and that three other characters were bisexual girls. It’s nice to find representation in books when you aren’t expecting it. I really liked the focus on Lola’s sexual orientation - and how she came to terms with it throughout the book.  In fact the majority of the characters in this story were women, which was really refreshing for a sci-fi/dystopian story. The characters were so young though, and there was a lot of sexual content - not so explicitly, but explicitly enough that you felt a bit uncomfortable with their ages. There was a lot about the book that felt realistic though - and many of the female characters had been victims of sexual violence (though there was no explicit rape scene). 

I liked how the book showed Lola’s transition from the upper class girl who went to private school, to the rough life she was forced to lead in her new neighbourhood. She makes friends with some girls she meets on the streets and joins their gang, and she has to begin to resort to more dangerous activities to survive. It’s also interesting how her language changes - she picks up their street slang and dialect, which is all the more noticeable through the diary format. 

Another thing I found interesting was Lola’s conservative aunt, and her influence on her little sister who is 9. Her aunt is conservative and pro-life, and she gives Lola’s sister this creepy toy, called My little fetus, or something like that, and it’s this thing you strap onto your stomach to make it seem like you are carrying a baby. Lola’s little sister loves it, and wears it all the time - and later when the riots get worse, her mother caves in and lets the sister go to live with the aunt. It’s really sad, because we see how Lola’s sister gets alienated from her due to influence from the aunt, and from her homophobic peers - she loves her, but she is also frightened of her when she finds out she is a lesbian. 

I really enjoyed this book - I didn’t have many expectations going in, and I was really impressed overall - however, I’d caution others before reading it, because a lot of the content is disturbing and difficult to read about. 

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A Series of Unfortunate Events - books 1 - 13, + Unauthorised Autobiography + Beatrice Letters, by Lemony Snicket

I reread all of these, in the wake of watching the latest Netflix season of a Series of Unfortunate Events. I love the show, I think it’s such a brilliant adaption, so it was cool to revisit the books. 

The books do a great job of telling you two stories - one the main story of the plight of the Baudelaire orphans as they go from guardian to guardian, and then the second, hidden story about their parents, and V.F.D and the secret society so many characters are involved in. These stories slowly merge as the books continue, as the Baudelaires find out more about V.F.D and their parent’s past, but you as a reader still have to piece a lot of the story together, and there’s a lot of hidden clues to discover, and some mysteries still haven’t been conclusively solved by readers (coughs, sugar bowl). 

I also really love the slightly absurdist/whimsical nature of the story - it’s not set during any identifiable time frame for example, Lemony Snicket writes on a typewriter, and characters frequently send telegrams, however there is also talk of an ‘advanced computer system’, and other more modern devices. A lot happens in the story that is frankly unrealistic - but being realistic isn’t the point, and everything that happens fits in with the general atmosphere of the story. 

I love how Lemony Snicket is a character in his own story as well - and we slowly find out more about his life as it goes on. Snicket also puts a lot of literary references into his stories that would go over the heads of most younger readers, but which are enjoyable to discover on a reread. When I was younger, I remember being fascinated to discover that a lot of places/things in the story are named rather appropriately using obscure words which often make a sly commentary on the nature of the place/thing. Also, Sunny’s speech often has a deeper meaning too, when you look into it. 

A really great series, and I’m looking forward to the final season coming out! 

[atreeofbooks]

Big Little Lies, by Liane Moriarty

Another book I read to my girlfriend! 

This one was a good read - if pretty light. It focused on the drama between a group of mothers, whose children were enrolled in the same school, which I thought was a really great concept, and was was written well by the author.  Our curiosity is first piqued when we learn that there has been a murder at the school trivia night, and then the book flashes back several months previously, and we read about how the drama first unfolded and the events leading up to the fatal night. While the book was written from the perspective of three central characters, Madeline, Jane, and Celeste, one of the things I enjoyed most about the book was that each chapter was interspersed with segments from the interviews that investigators conducted with the other parents and teachers after the event at the trivia night. This was an interesting and funny way of showing the audience how events were perceived by the other parents, how gossip spread, and how people’s acts were misinterpreted. 

I do think that the author, who definitely had a great concept, could have taken the idea much further. She could have introduced a lot more drama and scandal than she really did in the end - and I think ultimately the book fell a little flat for me. The other thing - there was a plot line where a male character is introduced as gay, but then we find out that it was actually a misunderstanding on one of the female protagonist’s part and that he was actually straight, and then they get together at the end. I’m never really a huge fan of these kind of plots, where we are led to believe a character is gay, but it turns out they are really straight - especially where, as in most of the media I’ve encountered this trope in, this leaves the story with 0 gay characters. It’s kind of annoying. But other than that, a pretty good book. My girlfriend and I tried to watch the TV series after we finished, but we didn’t really like it - I think they really missed the spirit of the book. Granted I only saw the first 20 minutes or so, so maybe it got better :) 

[atreeofbooks]

Somewhere Inside of Happy, Anna McPartlin

This was another book that my girlfriend chose, and that I read to her, which we didn’t know anything about going in. It turned out it was about a woman whose son and his friend disappear mysteriously. The book focuses on the search for the boy, and the reactions of his friends and family to his disappearance. 

This book was kind of an “issues” book - covering topics like domestic violence, homosexuality, and drug addiction. Despite this, I thought it was done quite well, the issues were handled sensitively, and me and my girlfriend enjoyed it a lot. 

The characters were interesting and multi-dimensional - the mother was a survivor of domestic violence and we see her work through her past trauma while beginning a new relationship, who coincidentally is the policeman who is heavily involved with the search for her son once he goes missing. 

The daughter was working through her feelings about her father; being too young to comprehend his abuse to her mother when it was happening, she tries to reconcile this knowledge with the memories she has of a kind father. 

The biggest “issue” of the book is the gay son who goes missing. His sexuality was slowly revealed throughout the book - but it was pretty obvious to me from the beginning. More of a surprise to me was the fact that his friend was also gay, as he had been portrayed more typically “straight” throughout the book. The ending, unfortunately, was pretty tragic, but I liked the way that it dealt with the effects that casual, everyday, homophobia can have on people, especially from the people who they love the most. Violence and hate speech towards gay people is terrible, but I think for many it’s the casual, thoughtless comments made from people that you love the most that makes you feel the most isolated and alienated from society, and makes you internalise the most negativity, and I thought this was demonstrated really well in the book. 

As I said, the book was done well, and I enjoyed it, though it kind of had the feeling like it was written as a “lesson” for straight people, rather than as a story for gay people. It kind of felt written by a straight person for other straight people - and I mean there’s always a place for a book which aims to combat homophobia, so it’s not a bad thing. I just didn’t really connect that much with the story as a lesbian. 

This book also made me reflect on how a lot of straight women seem to have this fascination with writing about gay men, while I’ve never encountered a book written by a straight women about a lesbian. I have mixed feelings about this -  obviously, I can’t demand that straight women write books about lesbians, and I feel weird even implying that. I think people should write about whatever they want to write about, and it does make sense, that straight women would be more interested in writing about men. And really the best books about gay people are written by other gay people, so like, it’s not that I think that straight women would necessarily make this amazing contribution to lesbian literature. However - it does contribute to the feeling of isolation I feel as a lesbian from straight women, this idea that the majority of straight women aren’t interested in writing about us, or learning about the struggles we face, and makes me feel like they don’t really care about us. Straight women write stories with straight male protagonists, straight female protagonists, gay male protagonists - but not lesbian protagonists, and not often about bi women protagonists. I don’t know it just feels isolating and one of the attitudes that makes it difficult for me to open up around many straight women. 

I have encountered books with lesbian, and more commonly, bisexual women characters written by straight men - sometimes they are written in a rather sexualised way - but like I don’t know, while I sometimes roll my eyes reading lesbian/bi women written by men, at least its there! At least it’s on the page, you know! At least it’s visible! And I mean you could say - well, straight men write lesbians/bi women, and straight women write gay/bi men, and that’s just what they’re interested in so it makes sense. However, I've encountered more straight men writing about gay/bi men in their fiction than I’ve encountered anyone writing about lesbian/bi women. This might be because gay men are more visible, I guess, but I don’t know. Food for thought. 

Thinking about it the only lesbian content coming to mind that I’ve read written by an as-far-as-I-can-tell straight woman, is the weird incest scene in ‘Into the Forest” by Jean Hegland. So perhaps it’s for the best that straight women don’t write about us... /s  

Anyway, not much of this actually has to do with the book - which I did enjoy for the most part. It just got me thinking.