#i’ve been at war with my body for god probably almost 20 years? legitimately

[brattybottombunny]

vent in tags pls feel free to ignore

[mediaevalmusereads]

Strange the Dreamer. By Laini Taylor. New York: Little, Brown Books, 2017.

Rating: 4/5 stars

Genre: YA fantasy

Part of a Series? Yes, Strange the Dreamer #1

Summary: The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around— and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever. What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving? The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries—including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? And if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: blood, violence, drug use, rape, sexual slavery, abduction and imprisonment

Overview: I really enjoyed Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy, so I decided to give her new work a go. Overall, I also really enjoyed Strange the Dreamer because it had a lot of things that are characteristic of Taylor’s writing that I love - lush, lyrical prose; tragic, star-crossed love; a political conflict involving otherworldly creatures. The reason why I’m giving this book 4 instead of 5 stars mainly has to do with the pacing and the way events played out. There wasn’t anything wrong, I think, with the way Taylor handled her story - it’s just that I felt like things started to rush to a close too quickly, and I would have liked to spend more time in the book exploring character emotions.

Writing: Taylor’s prose tends to fall into two categories: lyrical and descriptive or straight-forward and economical. Part 1 of this book is more lyrical; the metaphors are more fantastical and the prose evokes a sense of longing and fascination. Taylor really captures the feeling of being immersed in a library, surrounded by stories, as well as what it’s like to have a dream (not a dream in your sleep - more like a goal or a wish that has a small or nonexistence likelihood of coming true). Part 1 was probably my favorite part of the book for this reason, as subsequent sections tended to lose that lyrical quality and fall into a style more typical of YA books.

Taylor’s pace is also fairly well-done in that I didn’t feel like I was being rushed or that I was plodding through the book. The only thing I would change in terms of pacing is the book’s ending; I felt a lot of things were dropped on the reader all at once, and though they were foreshadowed earlier in the book (which I very much appreciated), I tend not to like endings where too much happens.

Before I close this section, a couple of notes on descriptions and worldbuilding: though I know teenagers have sexual urges, I was a little put off by the descriptions of teenagers’ bodies in certain places. I can remember a few instances where Taylor describes the look of one character’s breasts, and though it wasn’t gratuitous, I didn’t like that these descriptions were included. I also thought the worldbuilding detail of “women get tattoos on their bellies as a rite of passage/coming of age marker when they become fertile and Sarai longs for one of her own” was a little uncomfortable. It made me feel like the world Taylor built was concerned with showcasing female reproductive capacity, and that just seems exclusionary. While it could have worked if the story was more about pushing back against reproductive regulation or exploring what such tattoos would mean for trans characters, as the book stands, that doesn’t really happen, so it was a weird detail that I felt distracted from the main themes.

Plot: This book primarily follows Lazlo Strange - an orphan who dreams of finding the lost city of Weep - and Sarai - the daughter of a dead god and a human who must hide her existence in order to stay alive. Lazlo is surprised one day when some inhabitants of Weep - led by someone called “the Godslayer” - show up in his library, asking for assistance from the land’s greatest scientists. Though Lazlo isn’t a scientist, he is the most knowledgeable person about Weep and its culture, so the Godslayer elects to take him along. Meanwhile, Sarai and several other demigods live in a secluded Sanctuary, hiding from the inhabitants of Weep so that they won’t be slain on account of their parentage.

Without spoiling anything (which is kind of hard, since there is a lot that happens), I will say that I really liked the central conflict of this book. Taylor does a good job of setting up a problem with no black-and-white solutions; it seems like everyone had a legitimate reason for acting the way they do, and no matter what happens, someone will be hurt.

But perhaps the thing I appreciated most about the plot was that Taylor never sets up a surprise twist that comes out of nowhere. I feel like I’ve read a lot of YA books that drop a bomb on the reader with no set up, and I personally feel like such twists make the story feel less cohesive. Taylor sets up all her reveals and twists by dropping hints early and frequently, and rather than make the story feel dull, I felt like they made the end emotionally fulfilling.

If I had one criticism of the plot it would be that the romance doesn’t feel genuine. Lazlo and Sarai seem to fall in love with each other too quickly, which made it seem like they got together because they just hadn’t had opportunities to meet other people. I didn’t see what they saw in each other aside from looks and special qualities like “oh, he’s able to share my dreams” or “she was kind to me when so many other people weren’t.” I wanted more out the romance, like Sarai falling for Lazlo’s kindness and Lazlo falling for Sarai’s compassion towards those who would harm her. Maybe there was some of that, but it was definitely overshadowed by lengthy descriptions of kissing, which I wasn’t much a fan of. I also wasn’t really a fan of the “dates” that they went on; some parts were cute, but overall, they dragged.

Characters: Lazlo, one of our protagonists, is likeable in that he’s pretty much the embodiment of a lot of book nerds. He starts off shy, completely absorbed with fairy tales and folklore, and loves to roam the abandoned stacks in his library. What I liked most about him, though, was his willingness to help people even if they treat him poorly. For example, there’s a character named Theryn Nero who is basically a Science Bro. He’s rich, beloved by everyone, and gets famous for cracking the secret of alchemy. While he puts himself up as the lone genius, he was actually aided by Lazlo and takes sole credit for a lot of things that Lazlo proved to be key in discovering. Lazlo, though annoyed, never lets his feelings get in the way of helping Nero when the greater good is at stake, and I really admired that.

If I had any criticisms of Lazlo, it would be that I wish his “dreamer” status or knowledge base was put to better use. After Lazlo gets to Weep, he isn’t quite as interesting as he was before, probably because he no longer needs to use his vast knowledge of stories to make his way through the world.

Sarai, our other protagonist, is fairly sympathetic in that all her problems feel undeserved. She is forced to stay locked away in a hidden Sanctuary in order to protect herself and her little found family (composed of other demigods), and though it’s for the best, it also feels stifling. I really liked that Sarai was not single-mindedly fixated on revenge for the things that happened in her past. Without spoiling anything, I will say that something happened which put the demigods and inhabitants of Weep in conflict with one another, and there is no easy solution that would guarantee that the demigods stay alive. Sarai has a lot of dreams like Lazlo - of finding family, of living a normal life, of living among the humans - but it’s not really viable for her, and instead of letting hate consume her, she tries to think up other ways of existing.

Sarai’s “family” is also charming. The group consists of 5 demigods who are the last remaining offspring of the slain gods, and all of them feel fairly complex. They all possess some kind of magical “gift”: there’s Sarai (who can produce supernatural “moths” that allow her to enter people’s dreams), Ruby (a girl who can turn herself into flames), Feral (the only boy, and he can summon clouds), Sparrow (a girl who can manipulate plants), and Minya (a girl who can make ghosts do her bidding). I liked that these characters had different personalities that often put them in conflict. Ruby is boy-crazy and seems to be obsessed with sex. Sparrow is more passive but has sweet moments where she makes a “flower cake” for Ruby’s birthday and braids Sarai’s hair. Minya is completely consumed by her desire for revenge, and it presents some real barriers to finding a solution to the group’s problems.

The supporting characters down in Weep are also fairly compelling. The Godslayer is sympathetic in that he doesn’t revel in his heroic image or title; instead, he feels complex and seemingly warring emotions tied to guilt over what happened to Weep and his role in it almost 20 years prior to the events of this book. The Godslayer’s companions are also sympathetic and have emotions that are easy to understand, and I loved that they seemed to take to Lazlo so quickly. They welcome all outsiders with open arms, but they have a soft spot for Lazlo, which I liked because it meant that he didn’t have to face bullying or gatekeeping from people he had longed to meet his entire life.

The inhabitants of the world outside of Weep were interesting. There’s Theryn Nero, who seemed like he would be a primary antagonist but doesn’t have enough “screen time” to truly be a threat. I liked that his conflict with Lazlo was low-key - it was intense enough to be annoying, but no so intense that their rivalry consumed the whole story or put petty emotions above the greater good. The other “scientists” who follow the Godslayer back to Weep served their purpose; not all of them had rich, complex lives, but they didn’t really need to because if they did, the story would feel crowded.

Overall, there weren’t any characters I disliked, per se. While I do wish Lazlo got to develop differently, there wasn’t much wrong with his character, and I think all of the main players had interesting backstories and motivations, and I appreciated the layer of complexity they all had. I do wish there had been more queer characters though. There is one wlw couple, though they aren’t too prominent in the grand scheme of things. Of course, that could change, as there is a whole second book to go through, but I wish some of the demigods had been lgbt+ so it felt like Taylor’s world wasn’t overwhelmingly straight and cis.

TL;DR: Despite some pacing problems at the end and minor details that didn’t fit my personal tastes, Strange the Dreamer is a lush, evocative fantasy about the power of dreams. Readers who enjoy epic fantasy and stories about gods, star-crossed love, and will probably adore this book.

[dearimonk-blog]

Opening Letter: Sadness, Shock, Differences, and Love in the Political Wilderness

Dear Dad,

You’ve been dead for over seven years, and I’m writing you a letter. I’m writing you a letter and I’m putting it on the Internet. I’m blogging, just like you aways wanted.

I sound sarcastic. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m spiteful that you’re gone, that you had some success with your writing before you died. I don’t, however, mean to be. I loved you, more than I ever knew while you were alive, and I miss you. That’s why I’m writing to you, dad, and sending this outside of the realm of the physical, in hope that your data still holds your life, and if I put more of my own out there then we can stand in the snow and say nothing again.

You started internetmonk.com in November 2000, shortly after the election of George W Bush (I remember you being up all night, watching the results, and possibly losing your mind-- facing out on the couch, one leg curled under you, the other firm on the ground, the way you ticked your neck when you sat still for so long), and it’s taken me most of 17 years to really read what you were saying.

Thinking back, it seems like I have held on to a small list of things I believed about your website and your writing, all based on hearing you talk and bitch and laugh about it. I believed you to write about evangelical Christianity, and about “The Church” (as I understood it, the metaphorical body of Christ, represented by congregations of believers, bringing the Kingdom of God to earth; the smaller details were the tinder that kept your website’s fires burning). And I knew you to be critical of your own subject and expertise. To you, like to most of the “secular” world, the Church had a lot of things wrong, and you specialized in calling them out on it.

You sharpened your blade on Joel Osteen’s fucking teeth and wielded words to slice through the prosperity gospel and megachurches, one personal essay at a time. But most importantly to you, and, back then, to me, too, you brought attention back to the foundation of your religion: the grace of God leading to the crucifixion of Christ for the redemption of all (I still have this rhetoric down pretty well, huh?). Anything else, I thought I heard you say, was practically beside the point.

And so you riled up all the pastors and church-goers fretting about their right and wrong doings. You pissed ‘em off. They wrote you. They commented. They called you a heretic. Your job security was frequently brought into question. You experienced a sense of alienation from your coworkers and community, because you were full of genuine conviction, because you cared, because you were honorable and true.

You were my hero, dad, even when I seemed to hate you or insisted on doing things you disapproved of. When I fucked up, you never stopped loving me. That’s what makes a hero: love, and you were filled to the brim with it, at least for me.

I was heartbroken, then, when I read one of your old essays and found your racism.

I was disappointed, then, when I discovered the great disconnect between how you love people in your immediate life and how you voted and abdicated for war, even defended it with God’s name.

I was confused by how you used your belief in a God who created all things and a Jesus who died for everyone’s sins to defend the loose notion of American nationalism.

And I have barely cracked the surface of those archives, Dad; there’s a lot more to find.

We had another election, you know, just barely over a year ago. It was the third presidential election I’ve been able to vote in. You were around for my first. I chatted with you online and told you that because Obama had won and I had voted for him, I felt like I actually did something, and I was happy and excited about it. I don’t remember your exact words, but they were lite and faint. I knew you hadn’t voted for him. I wasn’t trying to be mean. I was excited, and I knew I could trust you with that feeling, no matter if you agreed with my vote or not.

I bought weed that night, I’ll never forget it. I paid $20 for some amount of weed that I didn’t understand, smoked a blunt with my friends, and didn’t take any with me. It was a waste of money. The dealer was playing a video game, and every few minutes he changed the input on his TV back to cable so that we could all keep an eye on the results. When the confetti was flying and the landslide victory was established, he began yelling, mostly “No”s and “fuck”s, but then “Someone should assassinate that nigger”.

That’s when I left (I was immediately in the market for a new drug dealer), and I chatted with you from my dorm room. You were at home, two hours away, in the mountains of South Eastern Kentucky. Comfortable. You probably sighed and maybe said an oath or two. Complained to mom a little bit.

We never talked about politics. Not really. I knew you were conservative. You called yourself “libertarian-leaning” and I generally took that to mean “rebellious republican”.

It might have been in that moment, you know, with the stoned guy yelling racist stuff at the tv, that I started to realize the world was much different then I had known it to be for a very long time. I ended up a card-carrying socialist, dad, and I don’t know if you’d hate that or not.

It’s been eye-opening, you know, looking back at all of your words, transplanting myself back to the time when you were writing. I was a kid during all of it. I hadn’t had any legitimate political conviction outside of the vague paranoia, distrust, and skepticism I learned from Alan Moore stories somewhere along the way (I remember once wearing a new Che Guevera t-shirt at the dinner table. You asked why your son was wearing a Che Guevera t-shirt, and me being young and foolish and vain, I had no answer).

September 11th 2001 wasn’t until most of a year after you started writing. The world was shifting very normally, and then very rapidly. Your moment, maybe, was much like mine. It’s been almost a year now since the election of Donald Trump into the office of the President of the United States of America. I lived under eight years of Barack Obama, the rise of drone strikes and the dirtiest war strategies, the quiet mass-deportations, the loss of privacy.

Do you remember when the words shifted in our mouths? “Terrorism”, “Bin Laden”, “Security”, “Patriot”, “Democracy”. They became sweet and heavy and new and absolutely everything changed.

And then I felt it again. “Immigrant”, “Privacy”, “Neutrality”, “Identity”, “Supremacist”, “Nationalist”, “Alt-”… our vocabulary shifting, evolving, representing our time and our moment.

I was confident for most of the past year that you would not have worn the red hat. That the person I learned from, whose ideas, conviction, and love led me to my political identity, couldn’t be on the wrong side; you would be on my side. But I question it now, dad.

I hadn’t realized your investment in politics. I didn’t know you were writing about it so much. I didn’t know all of that goodness that led me to the left could be argued to be so compatible with the right. At least I didn’t know you were doing that, until I looked.

So listen, dad, I think I have to do this. I think I have to talk to you. I think the moments I knew you to be strongest during were much like these ones I live in now.

And moreover, I miss you, and I want to talk to you, so maybe this is how.

Let’s tear open our differences. Let’s examine one another. Here’s my plan: I’ll keep listening to you, I’ll keep going through your essays and your posts, sifting through your data, and I will respond. Here. In this space. I’ll drop it off for you, dad. I’ll cry. And I’ll disagree with you. And I’ll wish you were across the table from me listening and huffing when I disagree, just so you know that I have to think about these things, too. That you didn’t raise a boy who can be completely ignorant. That you passed on lessons of conviction and love.

That hard line, Love, will have stay between us.