#books reviews

[calming-chaos]

[phantasticreads]

An Education in Malice, by ST Gibson | Don’t Let the Forest In, by CG Drews

Books I loved with endings that made me want to scream, throw them against the wall, cry, then immediately reread.

[fallingsapphires]

i've made it my mission to collect and read all the books in the thea sisters series, and then review them!

i remember genuinely liking the stories of multiple books in this series, and when i found out they had released a story set in malaysia, i was excited. then it spurred a desire in me to continue reading the series that was so popular among the girls during middle school. i've already bought 2 books recently and just finished them, and i wanted somewhere to document my reviews of it so here we go! some info under the cut for me to keep track of everything.

these are the ones i read as a child:

the dragon's code (book 1)

the ghost of the shipwreck (book 3)

the mystery in paris (book 5)

big trouble in the big apple (book 8)

the mystery on the orient express (book 13)

the dancing shadows (book 14)

the legend of the fire flowers (book 15)

the spanish dance mission (book 16)

it's a bit blurry to me if i've read the cherry blossom adventure and the prince's emerald before, but since i don't remember the stories, i won't include them.

as of 23/10/2024, these are the ones i've read as i'm older:

the secret city (book 4)

the secret of the old castle (book 10)

the hollywood hoax (book 23)

i'll eventually make a full list of all of them but i just wanted to see my full thought process physically before i fully review any of them sjhsjjs. also,,, my reviews won't be too long and not super serious jsyk. i won't be reading them chronologically, because the series doesn't really require you to do that (from what i remember !! this might change if i'm wrong LMAO) and also i'll just read what interests me first SJHSJFD okay lets go

[carriagelamp]

All I can say is why did it take me so long to finally try reading Wodehouse? I knew I would like the Jeeves books and yet it took me until now to finally crack one. Definitely my highlight for this month, though I was also very into the two nonfiction books I read.

I'm finding more and more that I enjoy a nice, narrative nonfiction... any one have any similar recs? Nonfiction has never been on my radar but now I really want to find more that follow this narrative vein...

Candy Color Paradox Assorted Pack

A collection of short bonus stories collected from various points in the series. Kaburagi and Onoe both work for the same weekly magazine and are initially forced to work together on stakeouts. Their relationship gradually grows from antagonistic coworkers to lovers to genuine boyfriends who are learning how to make their relationship work. One of the things I appreciate about this series is that once they decide to date, their relationship stays fairly stable — there’s hiccups as they work on their own insecurities or relationship complications, but there’s no breaking up or will-they-won’t-they once they’re actually dating and the drama shifts to their shared work and making a relationship work in a fairly homophobic society. This particular volume was fun though nothing outstanding, but it will help tide me over until the next book in the series.

Console Wars

A non-fiction book I read on my brother’s recommendation. I only have a vague sort of interest in the video game industry, I mostly enjoy hearing my brother talk about it because he has a lot of knowledge about it, but I really enjoyed this book! It describes the ins-and-outs of the Nintendo relaunched the video game industry in North America with the Entertainment System, and then the competition that gradually developed between them and the underdog that was Sega. It was an exciting, amusing, and engagingly narrative look at that period in history! I would definitely recommend it to anyone that has an even passing interest in that point in time, this book really makes you root for everyone involved!

Five Nights At Freddy’s

You know what, this one was on me. I should have known exactly how bad it would be and I still chose to try it. The problem is, back when the first… three-ish FNAF games came out in 2014 and 2015 the lore was actually kind of neat. I had a lot of fun playing through them with my cousins trying to find out more about the story. Obviously it devolved into something completely different and a lot more get-that-money-from-those-kids over the years, but I, naively, thought hey… if they’re making a movie… maybe they’re returning to some of those original plot ideas? Maybe it will even be… kind of interesting? The Silver Eyes was a fairly neat novel, even if the lore felt very different so… maybe this one would be too?

Nope. Read a chapter, loathed everything from the writing, to the attitude, to the characters, and then slung it back at my local library unfinished. Don’t even bother picking this up, good lord.

My Happy Marriage 2

This was… fine. I rather enjoyed the first book of My Happy Marriage since it was a Cinderella-esque story set in the Taishō era with some fun magical elements. Lots of class division, the main character suffered very clear abuse and it wasn’t just brushed away, and her arranged fiancé was clearly overwhelmed and sympathetic when faced with this very different fiancée on his doorstep. The writing wasn’t great but the plot was fun. In book two the writing continued to not be great, but the plot also just… didn’t catch my interest. I’d still recommend the first book for some pleasant, light reading, but I don’t think I’ll continue with this series. Might try watching the anime instead…

The Inimitable Jeeves

I’ve been meaning to read the Jeeves books for years, and I finally got the push I needed from a mutual who was recommending it to me. It was everything I could have hoped for! Really made me think fondly of The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde, or even Terry Pratchett’s writing to a certain extent — you can tell Pratchett read this author and picked up bits of his tone. Anyway, it’s exactly the sort of humour I enjoy and the whole thing is aided by having incredibly loveable characters. There’s the clever, unflappable valet Jeeves who seems capable of omniscience and of solving every problem to ever arise, as well as Bertie Wooster who I love with my entire  heart. If Bertie was a different sort of character or narrator, this might have been a much less enjoyable  series but he is a genuinely very kind, generous, likeable sort of person who is cheerfully aware that he’s a bit of an airhead and is happy to have Jeeves around to do this thinking. What a blessing. Highly recommend if you like short story collections and want something silly and fun.

The Last Firehawk v.11-12

This is a young children’s series that keeps compelling me to return to it for some reason. The first part of the series I actually quite liked and thought was very well done for the 5-8ish age group, depending on reading level. It’s easy reading but it’s a nice introduction to a linear quest plot and has reasonably nice art. There was a sharp decline in quality for most of the second series but I decided I should read the last two books just to say I’d done it. I’m happy to say that books eleven and twelve improved the story a little bit, with characters Tag, Skyla and Blaze discovering that their enemy from the first series (The Shadow) had returned and had taken a new host: a rat king that lived in the Underland.

The League of Lady Poisoners

An excellent nonfiction volume that contains short overviews of some famous female poisoners throughout history. It includes some nice, stylized art that was a treat, and I enjoyed the way the writer explored some of the motivations or reasons that a woman in these various time periods might resort to poisoning without painting every figure with a ubiquitous brush of Evil Monster. It was pretty light and I would read a story or two in the evenings.

The Long Patrol

I love Redwall books and felt like picking up one I hadn’t read before would be a nice treat for the spring. You pretty much know exactly what you’re going to get when you read a Redwall book and this one didn’t disappoint. It focused on various hares of the Long Patrol, the current Badger Lady, and a fun cast in Redwall Abbey. The dilemma arises because one of the Abbey walls is caving in and needs to be repaired, while a band of Rapscallion vermin are marching to try to take the Abbey for themselves. Standard fare. Lots of good food descriptions, a coming of age story for a young hare who had run away to join the Long Patrol, and a Goonies-style adventure with the Abbess and some of her friends as they explore the caverns beneath the Abbey. I can’t say I loved the book, but I enjoyed it. If you want a Redwall adventure, it delivers.

Owls in the Family

A cute chapter book that’s set in Saskatchewan during the middle of the century. It focuses on Billy who has a tendency to adopt strange pets that he collects from the plains. His newest acquisition is a pair of owlets — one he finds in a bush under a storm with a very spunky personality, the other a very meek, nervous one that he rescues from a group of older boys who were throwing stones at it. The book is filled with a variety of fun adventures that come from having a pair of loyal owls as pets that lightly terrorise the neighbourhood. It’s considered a school classic, though be prepared for some light racism considering it was published in the sixties…

She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat

A sapphic food manga! It follows a protagonist who enjoys being able to cook and post about the meals she creates. She is somewhat resentful of the men who then expect that this means she will be a very “domestic” sort of girlfriend, someone who will consistently cook them meals and keep house. That’s not the point! She likes the artistry of cooking! One thing she’s never gotten much of a chance to try though is to create larger, more robust or complex meals, because as a single person there’s no way to eat it all. When she meets a neighbour from down the hall though, she’s delighted to have found someone who is very appreciative of her cooking and will enthusiastically join her in cooking and eating the meals. Such begins their relationship.

The Very Very Far North

This book feels like a modern day Winnie-the-Pooh. There’s a charming timelessness to it; it made an excellent bedtime book. The story follows Duane the polar bear as he gradually makes friends with some of the other animals who live in the Very Very Far North and the lighthearted adventures they have around the Arctic. The main theme of this story is how one can be friends with people who have very personalities and interests from yourself, and it does a great job of setting up each character as very different and then makes them learn how to coexist and get along.

Minecraft: The Village

The last of Max Brook’s Minecraft trilogy. I also can’t believe I’ve read three entire Minecraft novels considering I couldn’t give two hoots about the game in general, but Max Brooks treats the topic surprisingly seriously and creates a compelling story. The series began with the protagonist, Guy, waking up in this strange world with very few memories of his life before, and now forced to learn how to understand the bizarre rules of this world and learn how to survive. Each book in the series (The Island, The Mountain, The Village) expands the scope of Guy’s world and the challenges he has to overcome. The first book focuses on how to survive as an individual, how to learn and respect the natural world, and how to find a moral compass even on one’s own. The second book introduces a new character, Summer, and focuses on learning how to compromise and work alongside another person, and is all about friendship rules. The second was, imo, the weakest of the series but since I am not the intended audience the friendship lessons also felt the most dull to me. This third book was another uptick and may be my favourite of the series. Guy and Summer leave the Mountain in an effort to find a way to return to their true homes and along the way discover a Village that’s filled with villagers. In this book their world expands to include other people and cultures as they have to learn how to respect other people’s autonomy, and question what it means to exist as a society. It really poses some neat questions, I enjoyed the discussion a lot. A nice strong ending to the series.

[weltonboys]

idk if anyone’s interested but i have a book insta where i post a lot of advanced reader copy reviews of books ive been sent early so! give me a follow over there friends!

[pearlypinkies]

Book Review: The housemaid is Watching

The Housemaid is Watching- by Freida McFadden

This review will be spoiler free and is divided into sections of overall storytelling, my thoughts, and do I recommend it?

Storytelling

The book starts off with a timeskip of 12 years, the protagonist Millie is now a mother of two kids and she moves into her dream home which was priced suspiciously low. Everything seems to be going great for her, a loving husband, beautiful children and a 'normal life' which she longed for all her life. The neighbours however, are far from normal. A flashy, overly-flirty real estate agent and an obnoxious old woman who keeps her son on a leash and has a peeping habit. Millie gets caught up in their shenanigans when the entire story takes a dark turn and someone is murdered and the culprit might be too close to home.

My thoughts

Now I know the description sounds promising but trust me, the book was not good. The previous two books of the series were great, and slightly worse respectively but this one, geez. I will not miss the first three quarters of the book and the last quarter is something I want to forget about. 

It starts off with the daily activities of Millie's family making choco-chip pancakes and the kids missing school. Fine. It was then led by more choco-chip pancakes and baseball practice. Then starts the unnecessary drama about infidelity and insecurity. WHY. Whatever happened to gripping plots and suspense. 

Now I will give credit where it's due, the saving grace was the murder angle and the investigation which I found interesting. However it does not last very long as the revelation is just bleh. Not even bad but infact lame. I had really high hopes from this book as Freida Mcfadden has shown excellent work with the previous two books but this one does not live upto the expectations. 

Do I recommend it?

No, I know it must be very tempting to pick this up especially after the cliffhanger of the previous one but there's nothing about this book which makes me want to recommend it. Read my next blog on review of  "The Silent Patient".

PS: I would suggest the readers to not engage in hate towards the authors, this is just a piece of fiction and should not harbor any negativity for real people.

[inks-books]

Me preparing for bad reviews if I ever get published.

[bookreviewshehe]

The next books might be:

Roadside picnic by the Strugatsky Brothers (I’ve already suggested the lecture on my main blog but never got to write a proper introduction to the book)

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Futu.re by Dmitry Glukhovsky

Metro 2033/34/35 by Dmitry Glukhovsky (I doubt it I need to write so muuch about the saga)

Outpost the second volume by Dmitry Glukhovsky

Honestly I would integrate also some classicals as Orwell, Kafka, Dostoyevsky and some Italians as Calvino, Pasolini ecc… I’ll probably do them when I’m in short of time cause having already read them I just need a minute to review :)

[katnisshawkeye]

Abhorsen

Scheda informativa

Titolo originale: Abhorsen

Terzo capitolo de: Trilogia del Vecchio Regno

Autore: Garth Nix

Editore: Fazi Editore

Prima edizione: 2024

Pagine: 380

Prezzo: € 18,50

Trama

Dopo secoli di cattività, il Distruttore sta per tornare libero: Orannis non è più imprigionato nelle profondità della terra e sta cercando di spezzare l'ultimo vincolo che gli impedisce di esercitare i suoi terribili poteri. Mentre il Vecchio Regno cade ancora una volta nell'oscurità e nel terrore, la popolazione può confidare solo nell'Abhorsen, flagello dei morti. Ma l'Abhorsen Sabriel si è recata ad Ancelstierre insieme a suo marito il re e nessuno ha più ricevuto notizie. Soltanto Lirael, erede alla carica di Abhorsen, ha qualche possibilità di fermare Orannis, anche se non ha idea di come fare. Fino a poco tempo fa era semplicemente un'assistente bibliotecaria, che speranze può avere di salvare il mondo? Guidata da una visione delle Clayr, Lirael decide di mettersi in viaggio insieme ai suoi fidati compagni – Sameth, la Canaglia e Mogget – per cercare ovunque, sia nel regno dei vivi che in quello dei morti, qualcosa che la aiuti a fermare il Distruttore. Ma tra i mostri d'ombra e malvagi negromanti, sembra che Nicholas, il migliore amico di Sameth, si sia lasciato manipolare dai poteri di Orannis e stia collaborando con lui. Che possibilità ha una giovane donna di sconfiggere un potere in grado di distruggere la vita stessa?

Recensione

È sempre meglio agire.

Con l'Abhorsen — il terzo volume della Trilogia del Vecchio Regno — si conclude il viaggio di Lirael che, partita dal Ghiacciaio delle Clayr come “Clayr senza vista” trova non solo il suo posto nel mondo, ma anche una famiglia e degli amici che, con il tempo, imparerà a conoscere, così come diventerà un'Abhorsen degna del suo ruolo, orgoglio di suo padre, Abhorsen prima di Sabriel,e della stessa Sabriel sua sorellastra, proprio come sua madre Arielle aveva previsto.

Meglio non contare le mele prima di aver piantato l'albero. [...] La vita andava avanti, sebbene in una lotta continua.

Come nei precedenti volumi Lirael e, prima ancora, Sabriel, anche nell'Abhorsen sono contenuti preziosi insegnamenti, tra cui il non mettere fretta al tempo e alle proprie capacità e abilità di spledendere, e il non arrendersi mai di fronte alle difficoltà.

La scrittura di Garth Nix ti tiene incollato alle pagine, piene di colpi di scena e avventure che vorresti davvero vivere in prima persona, nonostante l'oscurità e l'incombente malasorte del mondo che potrebbe polverizzare tutto il conosciuto, tanto che anche nel fortuito caso in cui Lirael e i suoi compagni non fossero riusciti a fermare il Orannis, il Distruttore, la fantasia del lettore sarebbe galoppata: se per pura fortuna un singolo individuo, o un paio di esseri viventi, fossero riusciti a scampare alla morte certa, cosa sarebbe loro successo? Un interrogativo che, comunque, non si pone se non in un finale alternativo.

L'epilogo dell'Abhorsen lascia comunque spazio all'immaginazione: in cosa consiste il nuovo e inaspettato percorso di Nicholas Sayre?

Valutazione

★★★★★ 5/5

La serie Trilogia del Vecchio Regno

Sabriel Lirael Abhorsen

Supportami su Instagram!

[therealrichardpapen]

Nothing screams Dostoevsky more than descending into madness on the couch, right? Well, it's not only that, I can assure you.

BEHOLD, I've finally finished this monster of a book (so you don't have to heh). In case you're not familiar with Dostoyevsky or the topic of Crime and Punishment, let me give you a short summary. Raskolnikov, our main character that we follow, is a law student who dropped out and now struggles to live in St. Petersburg. During his struggle, he gets this amazing idea of committing murder, and he does so. He kills a pawnbroker, and then, well, the suffering begins. I'm not going to dive deeper into it at the moment, since some of you might want to read it.

The actual topics behind the plot are definitely not murder or the criminal desire, but the torment and guilt that affects the murderer. We discover that after the murder (crime part of the title), the torment follows shortly (the punishment part of the title lol). It's extremely visible, we can say hidden in plain sight even, that for Raskolnikov, the guilt in itself it's the punishment, and he deeply desires to liberate himself from it. He achieves this by going back and forth between a dreamlike state and reality while acting as though he has gone insane. Because there is so much more going on in the novel, we frequently become disconnected from him, which makes us more curious about what will ultimately happen to our tormented hero.

Dostoyevsky is well known for creating long, unnerving and (why not) boring paragraphs or plotlines. If not for my very stubborn and motivated personality, I would've given up a long time ago. Besides Raskolnikov's murder story, we also get a glimpse of other character's lives, such as: his sister, Dunya, and her "soon to be'' husband Luzhin; Svidrigailov, a man with his very own disputable past, and Marveladov and his family. All of these characters comprise, as a whole, what we call Crime and Punishment, and without them, the book wouldn't have been what it is.

I must admit that I personally felt completely disoriented (at times) by the number of characters that kept being thrown into the story for no particular reason. The perspective contributed to the confusion without a doubt, BUT I THRIVED YAY.

Now allow me to fangirl, will ya? Razumikhin, bless him! Such a meow meow character, definitely made the whole sufferings of reading Dostoyevsky more enjoyable. I was howling for more interactions between Raskolnikov and Razumikhin. The chemistry between them was amazing and I genuinely feel like it was underdone and overshadowed by the other plot lines.

Story wise, some very intriguing topics have been touched upon, such as "the ones that are ordinary people and the ones that are extraordinary". If you're not familiar with the plot, later in the novel, Porfiry (chief investigator) finds out that Raskonikov wrote an article on those who kill and why. He stated that those that are extraordinary have a duty and obligation of committing all manners of outrageous acts. This sparks a whole chapter of discussion as to who has what right on what actions, that subsequently ends with Porfiry starting to unravel the mystery and sniff out Raskolnikov. Napoleon is mentioned quite a lot in this context, showing the amount of influence French culture had on Russia at that time, and even at the end, when the confession happens, Raskolnikov admits he tried being a Napoleon, situating him in the small bubble of what earlier was called "extraordinary people". What stopped Raskolnikov from becoming an "extraordinary" was his inner punishment and the fear of being caught, even though he covered his footsteps surprisingly well. In his own way, he knew that self attained peace with his act was never a thing that could've been achieved; and so, he prolonged his freedom (which was only suffering in disguise) until his incarceration, bound to happen sooner or later, a natural step for those who are not extraordinary.

In the epilogue we get to see a different Raskolnikov, regretful, sad but still somewhat unable to fully acknowledge the murder. "Yes, of course, a criminal act has been committed; yes, of course the letter of the law has been violated and blood's been shed - so take my head for the letter of the law … and that's your lot! (And, of course, plenty of humanity's benefactors, who never inherited power but grabbed it for themselves, should also have been executed after taking their very first step. But those people coped with the step that they took, which is why they are right,) but I couldn't cope with mine, so I had no right to take it. That was the only crime he acknowledged: that he hadn't coped and had turned himself in." His only guilt and regret revolve around his own inability to thrive through the punishment he couldn't cope with, and he still seems oblivious to the murder part. Towards the end, Rodya lacked any type of will that drove him before ("He lived with eyes lowered: looking up seemed loathsome, unbearable") and after a short encounter with Sonya, he got the Gospel she gave him and started pondering on whether he should start believing in what she believes.

To end it on a hopeful tone, he began looking forward to a future with her, leaving us uncertain as to what happens further. We can only hope that somewhere, after his sentence ended, he did get reunited with Sonya and lived a life together.

[solarmusick]

the broken earth trilogy, by n. k. jemisin: three and a half out of four little earthquakes

i read the broken earth trilogy all at once, so i can't necessarily remember which bits were in which novel.

the broken earth trilogy is a fantasy series with scifi elements (or vice versa?) and a very limited magic system -- a feature of many newer fantasies, i think, perhaps in a bid for originality. i found that a little less compelling than a world with a wider scope of the fantastic; it felt somehow artificially limited. your experience may be different. the transformations of the main character in the final book are fantastic, however, as is the revelation of her ultimate fate. i also loved the backstory of the oddest characters in the series, which comes out in the third book. i thought that the third book had the strongest writing at the level of prose, as well. my favorite part was none of these elements, however, but [SPOILERS?] the brief idyllic polyamory interlude in between all the horrendous events that befall the characters. look forward to that.

it would be easy to file these books under novels that deal with catastrophic natural disasters (that may have a human origin…?) and therefore link with climate change; i suspect that jemisin did have that in mind.

this can be a stressful series to read because the characters live in a stressful world. the environment is hostile, the people are hostile, great disasters and personal dangers fall without warning all the time, and trust is dearly earned. there are, however, satisfactions to be had there, too. oh, and there's trans representation, for which i am always glad. jemisin's getting our backs out there.

[calming-chaos]

[cryingoflot49]

BOOK REVIEW

Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

    I will say the same thing about Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow that I said about another of his novels, The Crying of Lot 49. You need to read this book a minimum of three times before you can really start to get it. The first time is just to see what’s there and to familiarize yourself with the text. The second time is to identify the narrative structure and the scheme of the story. The third time is when all the fine details emerge and the book really comes to life.

What eventually does emerge, after the third time through, is a loosely-structured, picaresque story that takes place at the end of World War II. It involves an ordinary and unremarkable man named Tyrone Slothrop, who is under surveillance. The reader gets introduced into a work with a countless number of characters, subplots, situations, symbols, show tunes, and commentaries, most of which may or may not add up to a complete and comprehensible picture. If it sounds like an overwhelming mess, that’s because it is and that is also why the novel is brilliant.

As it all begins, Tyrone Slothrop’s presence is barely noticeable. He doesn’t actually show up until three quarters through the first of the four sections. What does show up is his map of London covered with stars like the ones you get in kindergarten for getting all the answers right on your homework. As we a re led to believe, Slothrop puts each star on a place where he had sex with a woman. The stars multiply rapidly and the British secret service take notice because they have a similar map with stars located in the exact same places. But the spies’ map marks all the places where German bombs fell on London. These just happen to coincide with the places where Slothrop got laid. As they monitor his map, they feed the information to a team of researchers in a former mental hospital called “The White Visitation”. The team is managed by a bitter, sexually frustrated control freak named Pointsman, a Skinnerian behaviorist psychiatric researcher who also overseas a team of psychics and mediums whose seances are used to coordinate information with the statisticians and scientists in the vicinity. They are attempting to figure out how Slothrop is able to predict, through his sexual behavior, where each German bomb will fall.

Take note of a few things in this first section. The heavy snowfall introduces the color white as a symbol of death that persists through the whole book. BDSM is introduced as a symbol of colonial domination. Behavioral psychology experiments are also used to raise the question of whether humans can be controlled or not. Connections are made between science, technology, and multinational corporations. Also, the secret service and their colleagues at the White Visitation are involved in making a movie of some sort. Other themes that are introduced are the proximate relation of opposites that never correspond in full and the circularity of life. As one scientist points out, the stars on the maps of London are supposedly a record of Slothrop’s lovemaking, the place where bombs fall, and also the places where births are given. Then of course, there is the Rocket.

One of the great things about Pynchon’s writing is that he always states his main ideas in ways that are loud and clear. That is why his novels need to be read more than once; you can not identify what is being said loudly and clearly unless you are able to recognize how this is being done and familiarity with the text is what makes this possible. In the Case of Gravity’s Rainbow, there is a scene towards the end of the first section in which the captains of German industry attend a séance. The message they get from the medium, who later dies and makes contact with the psychics at the White Visitation, is that they need to learn about synthesis and control. This is also a message to the reader that these are the main themes of the novel.

But going back to Slothrop, we learn, if his memory serves him correctly, that during his childhood a behaviorist psychologist named Laszlo Jamf conducted Pavlovian experiments on him. But instead of conditioning a dog to drool, Jamf experimented with conditioning Slothrop to get an erection in the absence of sexual stimulation. As Slothrop progressed through life, ending up at Harvard studying rocket engineering, he always had a suspicion that he was being watched by people who were keeping records of when he got aroused. Then when World War II broke out, the American military stationed him in London for an undisclosed reason. It is there that we learn the private thoughts of Pointsman, a man who is obsessed with control but impotent and unpopular with women. Pointsman, being jealous of Slothrop’s sexual prowess, assigns himself the task of destroying the bumbling American soldier.

This first section is the most clearly written part of the novel. This is significant because it is here that all the major themes and characters get introduced, later to reemerge as the narrative moves on. The writing really does follow a narrative arc, like a rainbow or the trajectory of a rocket. As this arc climbs upwards, the literary threads all begin to intertwine as a clear picture of interconnections come into view, but as it descends, the details become less clear, the characters less distinct, details become fuzzy, the themes and interconnections less certain. Slothrop comes closer and closer to solving his own riddle and then the entropy sets in full force.

What is Slothrop’s riddle? He is searching for the Nazi-manufactured V2 rocket S-Gerat with the serial number of 00000. He thinks that finding this rocket will help him solve the mystery of what happened to him when he was a child and why there always seem to be people following him and arranging the events in his life. This plot comes into sharper focus when the secret service move him, again for some undisclosed reason, to the Hermann Goering Casino on beaches of the French Riviera. Notice that Slothrop, in his quest to find the source of the V2 rockets, moves below and counter to the route they take to London; the rockets are manufactured in Peenemunde, Germany, and shipped to Holland where they are launched to land in London while Slothrop moves from London to the Mediterranean coast, then up to Zurich and onward to the northern seacoast of Germany.

While on the beach, Slothrop rescues the Dutch prostitute and spy named Katje from an attacking octopus and becomes suspicious that the situation was staged so the secret service could film a movie of it. After that, other events at the casino appear to be staged for the same reason and Slothrop’s paranoia increases. What also happens in France is Slothrop’s frequent changing of costumes begins. It should be noted that Slothrop’s behavior and personality remain constant throughout the book no matter what outfit he is wearing. In his case, the clothes do not make the man. They are only superficial differences. The surface appearance does not synthesize with Slothrop. They are two parallel lines that come close to each other but never truly connect. This is a postmodern theme that runs through the whole book.

At a party, Slothrop meets up with a black marketeer who sends him on an errand to find a smuggler named Springer in Switzerland. At this point, the scientists and spies at the White Visitation can no longer control Slothrop because they do not know where he went. Slothrop becomes a hero because he has proven, through his own individuality and initiative, that a single person can resist and even break free from control by corporate and governmental powers. Furthermore, Pynchon is possibly telling us that Slothrop achieves freedom through hedonism; his constant pursuit of sex and drugs is what leads him out of the prison of modern technocratic domination. But something else is also pulling Slothrop along the road to freedom. While in Switzerland, he obtains a file from another espionage agent that gives details about Laszlo Jamf, the S-Gerat V2 rocket 00000, and an industrially produced material called Imipolex-G. This last detail rings a bell and Slothrop thinks that if he can learn more about it, he will know everything he needs to know about himself. He leaves for Germany in search of the rocket.

Germany, in the third section of the novel, is dubbed the Zone. The Nazis have lost and the war is coming to an end. The country is in chaos as barriers and boundary lines are breaking down. Slothrop is not the only one pursuing the S-Gerat rocket. Enzian is the leader of the Zone Hereros, a group of German colonial subjects from Namibia that were saved from genocide and brought to Germany by Weissmann, the Nazi general overseeing the building of the V2 rockets in Peenemunde. Enzian has a vision that if he can get ahold of the 00000 rocket, he can start a new religion to correct and replace the false beliefs of Christianity, thereby allowing the Black Hereros to colonize Germany. Enzian also has a Russian half-brother named Tchitcherine who was sent as a Soviet linguist to develop a written alphabet for the Kirghiz languageas part of a colonialist prject. While at a ceremonial poetry reading with the Kirghiz tribesman, he hears a poem about the Kirghiz Light, a mystical flash that caused the poet who witnessed it to go blind. Was it a flash from an atomic bomb? We can never know, but Tchitcherine gets sent to Germany and he also goes in pursuit of the V2 rocket, which he believes to be the source of the Kirghiz Light, while also nurturing plans to kill his half-brother Enzian.

There is also the story of Pokler, a rocket scientist who cares nothing about Nazi politics or anti-Semitism, but also wants to help develop the rocket because he believes it to be a means of transcendence. For him, Nazism is a means to a higher end. He believes the future of the world lies in rocket science which will allow the human race to leave the planet, reaching a higher stage of civilization in outer space. But Pokler has a sexual fetish and Weissman uses it to control him; Pokler is a pedophile who molests his daughter. Weissman lets him spend time with her whenever he wants something done, but as the years go on, Pokler realizes that each time a different girl is brought to him, probably because his real daughter was killed in a concentration camp. As this realization dawns on Pokler, the novel’s arc begins its descent and things begin falling apart.

Sexual fetishism is a theme that plays out throughout the whole book. Whether it be BDSM, sex toys, incest, pedophilia, coprophagia, or any other paraphilia, the behaviorist psychologists have caught on that people can be controlled by limiting their exposure to their fetishes. The more specific the fetish, the more control can be exerted over an individual. In contrast, Slothrop is liberated because he has no specific turn ons; he simply takes whatever sexual partners come his way, therefore his sexuality is a means of liberation rather than a mechanism of control.

As Slothrop continues on a series of misadventures, all involving sex and drugs, one character criticizes him for being paranoid, meaning he sees connections between things that are not connected. Slothrop goes into reverse and starts to think that there are no connections between anything. Furthermore, he also loses interest in his pursuit of the S-Gerat rocket. Despite his waning interest, Slothrop picks up some more information from an aging, mentally unstable German actress named Margherita Erdmann. From her he learns that Imipolex-G is a plastic invented by Laszlo Jamf and used as a binding unit in the S-Gerat rocket. Jamf wanted to invent something that transcends and dominates life, so he synthesized the material without the use of carbon which is the building block of all organic life on Earth. Not only does this plastic transcend life, it also can be shaped and molded into any form you please. For this reason, Jamf gets sent to America where he conducts experiments trying to shape and mold Slothrop, and human society as well, using behaviorist psychology, turning people into plastic to be manipulated by the technocrats who control the world. Do all the references to film and cinema have something to do with this? The passage about Imipolex-G ties together all the previous references to science, technology, and industrialization from the previous parts of the book. Here we learn that World War II is all a performance being put on to make it possible for the military industrial complex to take control of the world behind the scenes. A cabal of leaders from chemical, military, energy, transportation, and pharmaceutical companies have conspired to control the rest of us who are unfortunate enough to have no access to the realms of corporate power. Governments are just a smokescreen and World War II is just a way for the multinational corporations to make money. In fact, because of this cabal, the rockets being used to bomb London were made with materials manufactured by a British corporation.

But then one character explains that Laszlo Jamf never existed; he was created in the paranoid mind of Tyrone Slothrop to help him make sense of the world he lives in. But what if that character was lying about Slothrop’s delusions? What if that character was the one who was delusional? In the works of Thomas Pynchon there are no final answers. Weren’t they really out to get Slothrop anyways? When a couple of British doctors go searching for Slothrop in a German whorehouse, they find Marvy, the fat racist redneck idiot from Texas, and castrate him thinking he is Slothrop. This was done on orders from Pointsman. If that isn’t certain enough, we at least get a sense of what sector of the American population Pynchon isn’t proud of as Marvy is the butt end of cruel jokes throughout the whole story as he deserves to be.

In the final section of the book, Slothrop has faded away out of the narrative. There are suggestions that he has turned into the Horned God Pan as he lives in the woods without clothes and plays his harmonica rather than panpipes, which he almost loses in a creek. This refers us back to the beginning when Slothrop drops his harmonica in a toilet while attending Harvard while Red and Charlie, references to Malcolm X and Charlie Parker stand by and watch as he tries to get it out in one of the grossest passages of the book. There is one further mention of Pan in later pages. Perhaps Pynchon is suggesting that freedom from the military industrial complex can be achieved by a return to nature. The 1960s counter-culture makes an anachronistic intrusion into the latter half of the text.

The final section of the book also ties back to the first section in other ways too. Slothrop is first introduced as he eats some disgusting candies with an elderly woman in her London apartment and at the end the statistician Roger Mexico deliberately ruins a dinner party by describing the most disgusting foods he can think of. This is one of the most hilarious passages and I can not describe it any way that can do it justice. Are these passages connected? Kind of, not really, but maybe. That is how the book operates. There is also the final scene where an audience is watching Hansel and Gretel being performed in a London theater, but the end of this scene takes place closer to the beginning of the book. The scheme of the book is circular, turning back in on itself in Joycean fashion.

The themes of the book are also fuzzy. We learn towards the end that Slothrop’s map may not mark places where he got laid after all. The scientists at the White Visitation try to locate all the women he slept with and are unable to do so. The only one they can find is the old lady who gave him the disgusting candy. It is possible they were misreading the situation all along. And how would that explain the parallels between Slothrop’s map and the secret service’s map? Is there something they overlooked? Again, two parallel lines that never actually join together.

Then of course, there is the story of Benny the Bulb, a seemingly randomly inserted non-sequitur of a story that explains a lot of what Gravity’s Rainbowis about. Benny is a disobedient light bulb who tries to lead a conspiracy against the company that manufactured him. But the other bulbs aren’t too bright. Haha, get it? That’s Pynchonian humor right there. They refuse to go along with him. Still, he insists on rebelling by switching off at times of his own choosing. He is the bulb that sees the truth of the world and how the industrial corporations control everything, but he is powerless to do something about it so he spend his lifetime, if light bulbs actually have life times, simmering in impotent anger. Just like so many people in the world who have reached the same place as him. But wait a minute...weren’t there other bulbs in the narrative that went out at random times? Or am I remembering something that wasn’t there? If it’s true, then were all those bulbs part of Benny’s conspiracy? If it’s not true, am I being paranoid? Am I having false memories or am I more accurate than I think? In order to understand the novel, Pynchon makes you paranoid so you can see the point he is making about paranoia.

There is so much more to Gravity’s Rainbow. It would be impossible to cover it all here. There is a bewildering amount of information, none of the plots ever reach completion, we never learn what happens to most of the characters. That is what life is like. It is impossible to tell if all the interconnections are connected or if we, like Slothrop, are using paranoia as a mechanism to make sense of the world we live in. My interpretation of it all is that Pynchon is telling us that paranoia is a normal response to a world that is consistently uncertain, incomprehensible, and without any final answers. Maybe he also means to say that a little paranoia might go a long way in making each of us, as individuals, more free.

[abookisafriend]

the traitor baru cormorant, by seth dickinson: four and three quarters out of five backstabbings

a novel about colonization and the question of maintaining integrity while trying to change an oppressive system from within.

every character is believable. the tensions are subtle and drawn out magnificently throughout the long span of the book. the author is fantastically intelligent. despite the complexity of the plot, it is easy to understand, even if you lose track of some of the supporting cast sometimes.

queer representation. polyamory representation. ethnicities are fantasy groups, so i can't say there's broad representation there, but the fantasy resembles earth differences in a way that feels like representation.

be warned: the book has a twist like a knife. all my friends who recommended it told me to "prepare." i know that this is a short review, but i can't recommend this book enough to people who want to explore its themes. for anyone who would find a close look at the oppressive systems of colonization traumatic, however, avoid this book. the legal punishments for deviation in this colonial polity are utterly barbaric. the things allowed to the agents of this state are unconscionable. of course, they come bearing gifts -- dentistry, plumbing, medicine -- but their gifts come at a price.

it lacks the transcendence of lord of the rings, but there are few ways in which this book fails to satisfy; i had a hard time dialling down my endorsement to four and three quarters. as far as normal books are measured, this is as good as it gets.

there are sequels.

[too-much-imagination]

I've just read some of my old book reviews I used to do (about two years ago).

Wow, now I feel like a burnout kid.