Review: The Genesis of Misery

Title: The Genesis of Misery

Series: The Nullvoid Chronicles

Author: Neon Yang

Genre: Space Opera

Trigger Warnings: War, death, violence, unreality (severe), injury, sexual content (consensual, minimal descriptions), terminal illness, parent death, religious trauma, religious bigotry (mild), mental illness (delusions/hallucinations), confinement, involuntary sedation with drugs, medical content (mentions)

Back Cover:

An immersive, electrifying space-fantasy, Neon Yang’s debut novel The Genesis of Misery is full of high-tech space battles and political machinations, starring a queer and diverse array of pilots, princesses, and prophetic heirs.

It’s a story you think you know: a young person hears the voice of an angel saying they have been chosen as a warrior to lead their people to victory in a holy war.

But Misery Nomaki (she/they) knows they are a fraud.

Raised on a remote moon colony, they don’t believe in any kind of god. Their angel is a delusion, brought on by hereditary space exposure. Yet their survival banks on mastering the holy mech they are supposedly destined for, and convincing the Emperor of the Faithful that they are the real deal.

The deeper they get into their charade, however, the more they start to doubt their convictions. What if this, all of it, is real?

A reimagining of Joan of Arc’s story given a space opera, giant robot twist, the Nullvoid Chronicles is a story about the nature of truth, the power of belief, and the interplay of both in the stories we tell ourselves.

Review:

I picked this up for two reasons: a nonbinary protagonist and the idea of Joan of Arc but in space. And you know, this book definitely has both of those things. Misery is most definitely nonbinary. And there definitely are Joan of Arc-type elements to the overarching plot (although you probably have to know that’s what it’s supposed to be to spot them – it’s definitely more “Joan of Arc-inspired” than “space opera retelling of Joan of Arc”).

But if you go in expecting just that, you are not at all going to be prepared for what The Genesis of Misery is going to throw at you. Because like I said, those elements are there, but they are definitely not the main thrust of the story.

Before I go too far, I do want to talk about Misery for a moment. (I’m going to be using she/her pronouns here, because while Misery uses both they/them and she/her, the narrative primarily uses she/her.) She’s an interesting character by herself. She’s a bit of a troublemaker – not for the sake of making trouble or being rebellious, but because she just has other priorities that rank higher than “obey the rules.” One of those priorities is self-preservation. Born with the disease that killed her mother, and experiencing the delusions and hallucinations that the disease causes, her driving motivation at the beginning of the book is survival. And the best way to do that seems to be to convince everyone that the symptoms of her terminal illness are actually symptoms of being god’s chosen messiah. All of that makes for a very interesting character. Her tenacity, resourcefulness, and general focus on prioritizing what matters to her over what people around her want her to do made her compelling and enjoyable to read about.

I haven’t read many unreliable narrator stories – not intentionally, that just hasn’t been a big aspect of my reading in general. Misery definitely qualifies as one, though, and in a really interesting way. She’s unreliable because she experiences hallucinations and delusions as a symptom of her illness, and she is very aware of that fact. So I may not be able to tell if the narrative is telling me the truth, but neither can she. In fact, she was so unreliable that I ended up believing the exact opposite of whatever she believed. At the beginning, she was 100% sure it was just hallucinations and she was faking the messiah thing as a survival strategy. At that point, I figured the twist would be that she was really divinely chosen after all. But as the story goes on, she began to slowly begin to think that maybe she was god’s chosen after all – and I began to doubt that she really was the messiah, or even that this deity existed in the first place. It wasn’t really an unpleasant experience, but it was weird to basically switch opinions with the protagonist throughout the course of the book.

This review is already pretty long, and I haven’t even gotten into the plot. But honestly, the plot is not really all that important here. In fact, you could argue that there really isn’t much of one. Misery’s people are at war with the Heretics, who have rejected their god and are trying to invade. Misery is playing messiah (or growing into the role of messiah, depending on who you believe) to cover for the fact that she has a fatal disease. A lot of people are doing politics and such around Misery and have big plans for this and that, but for the most part Misery is doing her best to 1. Stay alive, 2. Stay not imprisoned, and 3. Convince people that the weird stuff about her is from messiah-ness instead of mind-altering space disease, in that order. Sure, there’s some Pacific Rim-style mech battles in space, but those don’t come in until quite a ways through the book and they’re not what it’s about anyway.

What really makes this story work is the religious aspect. This society has one god, the one true god, who agreed to help the humans who dispersed among the stars. This deity chooses saints, identifiable by their iridescent hair, who have powers to activate and control special types of stone that are used for all kinds of things through this society. This religion is integrated so deeply with the society that they never actually talk about a religion or name the faith – knowledge of this deity, following religious observances, the way the saints’ ability to control special stones make society function, it’s just part of how things are. At the beginning, despite being raised in the church, Misery doesn’t even believe in this deity. But ideas of heresy, orthodoxy and orthopraxy, paying lip service to religious rules while doing what you want anyway, the difference between ethics and religiosity, power structures, belief, and fanaticism are wound throughout the whole story. I don’t really know how to describe it. As someone raised in a religion that was big into fanaticism, private hypocrisy, and ignoring the spirit of the rules where possible, I found it both strange and sci-fi while simultaneously intimately and painfully familiar. Watching Misery start to believe that maybe she was the messiah had a similar ring – it was nearly the same process as my journey out of religion, but the opposite direction. It left me feeling a bit disoriented – which is, honestly, an appropriate feeling for this book.

I don’t think I have adequately expressed yet my overall opinion of this book. It’s good. It’s very, very good. But it’s an uncommon type of good. Some really good books hype you up. They get your adrenaline pumping, leave you emotionally exhausted at the end, and make you want to yell from the rooftops that everyone should read this book. (Honestly, as much as I liked it, if you’re not up for a book that’s heavily about weird space religions, you probably won’t enjoy it very much.) Instead, it’s a much quieter kind of good. It makes me want to slow down, savor the story, and appreciate the richness of the world and the journey. It makes me want to think and linger over all the religious elements, both thematic and emotional. There’s some bittersweet tones as I understand exactly why Misery is doing what she’s doing but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be painful for her. I can already tell I’m going to be thinking about this one for a while.

The Nullvoid Chronicles:

1. The Genesis of Misery

Review: Thief of Time

Title: Thief of Time

Series: Discworld #26 (Death #5)

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death (mentions), body horror (arguably), abandonment, injury (mentions), unreality, existential horror, mental illness, suicide, ableism

Spoiler Warning: This book is twenty-sixth in a series, but neither the book nor the review contain spoilers of any previous books (but knowledge of the previous books will make this review make more sense).

Back Cover:

Time is a resource. Everyone knows it has to be managed.

And on Discworld that is the job of the Monks of History, who store it and pump it from the places where it’s wasted (like underwater — how much time does a codfish need?) to places like cities, where there’s never enough time.

But the construction of the world’s first truly accurate clock starts a race against, well, time, for Lu Tze and his apprentice Lobsang Ludd. Because it will stop time. And that will only be the start of everyone’s problems.

Thief of Time comes complete with a full supporting cast of heroes and villains, yetis, martial artists and Ronnie, the fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse (who left before they became famous).

Review:

This book is a strange reading experience and not exactly easy to review. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very good. But it’s hard to put into words my thoughts on the matter.

First of all, Thief of Time is part of the Death sub-series, and I have struggled with nearly every book in the series for various reasons (although, in the case of Hogfather, that reason was more the circumstances in which I read the book than the book itself). In this case, the book doesn’t follow the same pattern of most of the Death books, wherein Death has a crisis about not being human and makes a stupid decision and the rest of the book is spent trying to fix what he screwed up. In fact, it feels weird to call this a Death book at all, since Death is hardly in it. I think there were Rincewind books that had Death in more scenes than Thief of Time. However, Death’s granddaughter Susan (who is at this point a favorite of mine) does show up and is pretty crucial to the ending, so maybe that’s why it counts? Regardless, Death is not actually a major player in this book.

There are actually a lot of players in this book. If you had to name protagonists, you would probably identify Lopsang Ludd, apprentice History Monk who somehow already seems to know the time tricks the monks are supposed to be teaching him, and Jeremy, obsessive and extremely talented clockmaker with some kind of mental illness. But there’s a definite third-person omnicient vibe in this story. Even if you only count characters who have point-of-view scenes, there’s also Death, Susan, Lu Tze the janitor monk, Nanny Ogg, Myria LeJean the … well, you should just read about that one, Ronnie the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, and probably a few others that I can’t remember off the top of my head. And each of those has a cast of secondary characters that only sometimes overlaps. There’s a lot of characters happening. None of them were bad and I liked all of them in their own way, but the frequent jumping between characters and places sometimes left me feeling a bit unfulfilled, like I wanted more out of the scene I just had before it switched to a different scene.

And now that I’ve covered the basic bookish stuff that feels like I should at least say it, let’s get down to the weirdest thing about this book: It does not feel like a Discworld book. It is funny, sure, and full of Sir Terry’s signature wit, but in a way that’s gently amusing, not laugh-out-loud hilarious. Even though the fate of the entire world and existence is at stake, it lacks true urgency. Instead, it’s slightly slower than you would expect for a book so full of characters and stories, it’s thematically rich, and above all it’s deeply philosophical. It pokes fun at a lot of ideas, but it also meditates on the nature of time and what it means to be (or become) a human being. I have really enjoyed most of the Discworld books I’ve read. Many of them have had interesting themes worth thinking about. But this is the only one where I really felt like it was touching on something real and meaningful and was actually expanding the way I think.

I really do not know what to make of this. Out of all of the books in this series, I really want this one to become a movie. I want to study it for the wisdom it contains. It’s a silly funny fantasy story while simultaneously giving me that expanded, slightly-off-kilter feeling of really good magical realism. I’ve learned so much. I know nothing. There are layers of meaning here that I haven’t yet unpacked. A very confused monk apprentice is following his master the janitor on a quest to smash a really fancy clock. Meaning is a glass clock, clear as a mountain stream yet distorted and obscured by joints and angles. This is a Discworld book.

I have maintained for most of my Discworld reading experience that Interesting Times is my favorite. Rincewind is still one of my favorite characters, and not only is it the best of his books, it’s so far the best combination of thematic depth and laugh-out-loud humor. But this one … it is so strangely, confusingly, almost unbelievably good. It does not feel like a Discworld book. It feels momentous. It feels like a book that wins literary awards and deserves them, and like Lu Tze is a powerful monk in the humble guise of a janitor, Thief of Time is a powerful work in the humble guise of a simple funny fantasy story. It hits so far above its weight class and goes so much deeper than it claims that I have no idea how to properly convey what I’m feeling. It’s a good and enjoyable story, but it’s so much more than that. I feel closer to enlightenment having read this. It is such a dramatic departure from anything I expected from a Discworld book, but it is so, so good.

The Discword Series:

1. The Colour of Magic
2. The Light Fantastic
3. Equal Rites
4. Mort
5. Sourcery
6. Wyrd Sisters
7. Pyramids
8. Guards! Guards!
9. Eric
10. Moving Pictures
11. Reaper Man
12. Witches Abroad
13. Small Gods
14. Lords and Ladies
15. Men at Arms
16. Soul Music
17. Interesting Times
18. Maskerade
19. Feet of Clay
20. Hogfather
21. Jingo
22. The Last Continent
23. Carpe Jugulum
24. The Fifth Elephant
25. The Truth
26. Thief of Time
27. The Last Hero
28. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
29. Night Watch
30. The Wee Free Men
31. Monstrous Regiment
32. A Hat Full of Sky
33. Going Postal
34. Thud!
35. Wintersmith
36. Making Money
37. Unseen Academicals
38. I Shall Wear Midnight
39. Snuff
40. Raising Steam
41. The Shepherd’s Crown

Review: Bronze Drum (DNF)

Title: Bronze Drum: A Novel of Sisters and War

Author: Phong Nguyen

Genre: Historical Fiction

Trigger Warnings: Death, blood (mentions), confinement, injury, sexual content (not described), colonialism, suicide attempt

Note: Trigger warnings in DNF books only cover the part I read. There may be triggers further in the book that I did not encounter.

Read To: Page 184

Back Cover:

Gather around, children of Chu Dien, and be brave. For even to listen to the story of the Trung Sisters is, in these troubled times, a dangerous act.

In 40 CE, in the Au Lac region of ancient Vietnam, two daughters of a Vietnamese Lord fill their days training, studying, and trying to stay true to Vietnamese traditions. While Trung Trac is disciplined and wise, always excelling in her duty, Trung Nhi is fierce and free spirited, more concerned with spending time in the gardens and with lovers.

But these sister’s lives—and the lives of their people—are shadowed by the oppressive rule of the Han Chinese. They are forced to adopt Confucian teachings, secure marriages, and pay ever‑increasing taxes. As the peoples’ frustration boils over, the country comes ever closer to the edge of war.

When Trung Trac and Trung Nhi’s father is executed, their world comes crashing down around them. With no men to save them against the Han’s encroaching regime, they must rise and unite the women of Vietnam into an army. Solidifying their status as champions of women and Vietnam, they usher in a period of freedom and independence for their people.

Vivid, lyrical, and filled with adventure, Bronze Drum is a true story of standing up for one’s people, culture, and country that has been passed down through generations of Vietnamese families through oral tradition. Phong Nguyen’s breathtaking novel takes these real women out of legends and celebrates their loves, losses, and resilience in this inspirational story of women’s strength and power even in the face of the greatest obstacles. 

Review:

I struggled with this book from the very beginning. And normally when that happens, I decide to stop fairly early on. It’s part of my whole “only read books that I enjoy” goal – if I’m not enjoying it, why keep reading?

The problem here is that I really wanted to like this book. It’s such a fantastic concept. I had never heard the story of Trung Trac and Trung Nhi before, but a pair of sisters who raise an army of women to drive out the people occupying their country is such a fantastic story. Even better, this is based on real historical people and events! My knowledge of Vietnam is extremely limited, so I was excited to learn more about Vietnamese traditions and values. And not only is Vietnam an awesome setting, this is specifically Bronze Age Vietnam, which, as someone who finds ancient history much more interesting than anything that happened less than a thousand years ago, I found especially appealing. There are so many good ideas and good concepts and things I really, really wanted to love and immerse myself in.

However, it ultimately ended up being disappointing. Some of that was stylistic. The writing was very a folktale, oral tradition type of style – narrative heavy, switching perspectives with no warning, not identifying particular “main characters,” and telling you everything that goes on instead of actually showing you. Though there wasn’t an explicit narrator, there was a strong sense of the story, the setting, and anything that might have made it feel vibrant being mediated and muted through the lens of an omnicient storyteller. The characters and world, though interesting in concept, struggled to rise off the page.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes this storyteller-narrator style could work – and it’s not an inherently bad choice for a story based in oral tradition like this is. It wouldn’t be easy to make it work in a 400-page novel, but it’s possible. In fact, I think it could have worked if it weren’t for this book’s second major problem: Nothing happens.

The back cover establishes that the death of Trung Trac and Trung Nhi’s father is when the story actually gets started. When I stopped reading, he was still alive. Nothing truly interesting happened until 150 pages into the book. The first 184 pages (and possibly more) were more like a slice of life in that time period. Trung Trac and Trung Nhi walked in the gardens, practiced fighting forms, learned from their tutors, fell in love, argued with each other, made occasional stupid decisions, had complex relationships with their parents, and generally just lived as Vietnamese young women under the Han invaders. Again, in itself, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If done right, having such a long period of “setting the scene” can make the rest of the story feel more important and impactful.

The problem is that this book tries to do both. With the storyteller style, the reader isn’t getting a lot of emotional connection with the characters, so it needs to have a stronger, quicker-paced plot to make it work. To keep a long period of setup from getting boring, the reader needs to create strong emotional connections with the characters. But by doing both, the narrator/storyteller style toned down the emotions and kept me from forming a connection with any of these characters that would have engaged me in the minutiae of daily life, and having such a long period of setup left me with no plot or major central conflict to get invested in.

This is a really difficult book to review because I desperately wanted to like it. I really wanted to read this story about warrior sisters in Bronze Age Vietnam! But the telling made two choices that both individually make sense (storyteller style to emphasize its oral origins and long setup to familiarize Western readers with the place and time) that combined to make it dull. Not unreadable, definitely, but not really enjoyable either. I wanted so much to like this. I just didn’t.

Review: Resistance

Title: Resistance

Series: Divided Elements #1

Author: Mikhaeyla Kopievsky

Genre: Dystopian

Trigger Warnings: Death, blood, needles/injections (severe), medical content, domestic violence (mentions), sexual content (mentions), injury, animal death (mentions), alcohol use (a lot), self-harm (brief)

Back Cover:

From the moment you are born, you are conditioned to know this truth: Unorthodoxy is wrong action, Heterodoxy is wrong thought. One will lead to your Detention. The other to your Execution.

Once known as Paris, the walled city-state of Otpor is enjoying a new Golden Age.

The horrors of the Singularity and Emancipation forgotten, citizens now revel in a veritable utopia of ubiquitous drugs, alcohol, and entertainment, washed down with full employment, universal healthcare, and affordable housing. All made possible by the Orthodoxy – a new world order where everything is engineered to maximum efficiency, including identities.

From an early age, citizens are aligned and conditioned to one of four neuro-social classes named after the cardinal elements of old: single-minded Fire to enforce, creative Air to entertain, technical Water to engineer, and base Earth to labour.

All four Elements exist in complete equality, fraternity, and liberty. But, not everyone is satisfied with the status quo.

Two generations after the Execution of Kane 148 and Otpor’s return to Orthodoxy, the Resistor’s legacy still lingers. Forbidden murals are appearing on crumbling concrete walls to threaten the city’s structured harmony – calling citizens to action. Calling for Resistance.

When Kane’s former protégé, Anaiya 234, is selected for a high-risk mission, Otpor is given the chance it needs to eliminate the Heterodoxy and Anaiya the opportunity she craves to erase a shameful past. But the mission demands an impossible sacrifice – her identity.

Subjected to a radical new procedure, Anaiya’s identity is realigned, allowing her to go deep undercover in search of the growing rebellion. But as the risk of violence escalates and every decision is fraught with betrayal, Anaiya’s fractured identity threatens to unravel not only her mission, but her mind.

Review:

I have read a lot of YA dystopian. This is largely because it was the primary YA genre during my prime YA reading years. If I’d read it back then, or even when it first released in 2017, I probably would have considered it a fine but not particularly noteworthy example of the genre. (Although it isn’t technically YA, it has a very YA feel, and I probably would have categorized it as such.) However, reading it in 2023 – with expanded adult reading tastes, an extra decade of reading and reviewing (and life) experience, and a much deeper understanding of books in general – makes it an absolutely wild experience.

There are some really great ideas and unique takes on dystopian tropes in this story. As much as I generally dislike the post-Hunger Games trend of dystopias sorting society into groups, this world’s idea of testing children’s aptitudes and then using neural conditioning/scifi tech to fully align their brains to particular elemental traits, making their elemental alignment basically hard-wired into their brains, was a unique take. I enjoyed the reconditioning element, where Anaiya got to experience emotions for the first time and all the complexities that emotions come with, especially when you’re not used to dealing with them. I found it both fascinating and relatable, and if the story dropped most of the attempted-dystopian elements and put the focus on Anaiya’s internal journey, I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more. The “are we the baddies?” idea is also a unique take on dystopian stories – instead of rising up from the oppressed under-class, the protagonist starts out as an agent of the dystopian government and slowly realizes that maybe the government isn’t as good as she thought.

However, despite the actually good ideas Resistance has, it has three major flaws that undermine it both as a dystopian story and as a reading experience.

First, it doesn’t convince me that this is a dystopian world. Characters talk about how terrible everything is, but not only do we not see that in the narrative, they don’t even give examples. The only actual described problem is police brutality (or, in this case, Fire element brutality) – it’s the only thing actually shown on-page and the only specific issue anyone complains about. Dystopian societies probably have police brutality, sure, but it’s not exclusive to dystopias. There is a curfew and the whole idea of conditioning people to elements in the first place, but these definitely more dystopian happenings are mentioned in passing as world-building. Nobody seems to actually have a problem with those.

Second, which ties into both the previous and next points, it never shows anyone in power in this society. The closest the story ever gets to someone “in charge” is the Fire element commander who gives Anaiya her initial re-alignment assignment. A dystopian society just doesn’t feel very dystopian without someone or a small group of someones at the top doing the oppressing, and this book never indicates that there’s anyone actually in power at all. It may be realistic that ordinary people don’t actually interact with those in power, but they should at least know who their king/”president”/commander/dictator/etc. is. Not only does it reduce the world’s dystopia factor, lacking an antagonist, even a symbolic one, makes fighting the system feel unrealistic.

Which brings me to the third problem: it fails to convince me that the resistance is a threat, or even that it exists in a meaningful way. Everyone is getting bent out of shape about the “Heterodoxy” and the brewing rebellion and how terrible this is going to be. But for the vast majority of the book, the entire rebellion consists of murals that say “Resistance.” That’s it. It does escalate a little towards the end, but not by much. The entire alleged rebellion against the entire alleged dystopia for most of the book is unauthorized paintings with provocative words. And, minor spoiler time, Anaiya’s infiltration finds there’s only three to five people behind the whole thing. The response to the threat of this Heterodoxy seems wildly out of proportion with the scope of the damage that five people doing unauthorized art can actually do.

I think I found this book so disappointing because there are some really good ideas. It does some truly fascinating things with standard dystopian tropes, and Anaiya’s personal arc is, quite honestly, superb. (That character resolution? Spectacular. Loved it.) There are a lot of interesting ideas in the world that had real potential. But then the plot itself fell so flat. I didn’t even hate the love triangle that much because none of it felt like it actually mattered. There was a fair amount of violence in the book, but it never felt like it had real stakes.

I did finish it. I started writing this review as a DNF, but at that point I only had about fifty pages left, so I went ahead and finished it to see if my criticisms bore out through the whole book. And in the end, I’m glad I did, because even though one of the twists felt entire out-of-the-blue and I guessed the other, the wonderfully satisfying resolution to Anaiya’s personal arc was worth it. Resistance isn’t a bad book, per se. I think I’m just disappointed that so many good ideas got a lackluster, stakes-less plot that didn’t do them justice.

The Divided Elements series:

1. Resistance
2. Rebellion
3. Revolution

Review: The Truth

Title: The Truth

Series: Discworld #25 (Industrial Revoluion #2)

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, murder, body horror, drug use (mentions), fire/fire injury, alcohol use (mentions), blood, injury, classism (background element)

Spoiler Warning: This book is twenty-fifth in a series, but despite that does not contain spoilers of previous books.

Back Cover:

There’s been a murder. Allegedly.

William de Worde is the Discworld’s first investigative journalist. He didn’t mean to be – it was just an accident. But, as William fills his pages with reports of local club meetings and pictures of humorously shaped vegetables, dark forces high up in Ankh-Morpork’s society are plotting to overthrow the city’s ruler, Lord Vetinari.

Review:

It seems like every Discworld book that takes place in Anhk-Morpork somehow involves a threat to overthrow Lord Vetinari. Most of them so far have been City Watch books and had the Watch thwarting the plot. In this case, though, despite the Watch definitely being present, it was investigative journalism that uncovered the answer.

The Truth is the second of Discworld’s “Industrial Revolution” books. In the first one, Moving Pictures, the Discworld got introduced to movies and Hollywood Holy Wood glitz and glam. In The Truth, the Discworld gets journalism. The thing I love most about it is that it happens entirely by accident. There’s something really appealing to me about stories where the protagonist didn’t mean to do all that, they just had a good idea for something small and it got out of control. Which is exactly what happened with William de Worde, who didn’t actually intend to become a journalist, he just thought a moveable-type printing press would make his letter-writing easier and it spiraled from there.

As with most other Discworld books, this one has some interesting themes and questions. The big obvious one is journalism – the nature of the press, what is considered news, journalistic judgement, what people want to read versus what “the public” needs to know, and some very pointed and un-subtle digs at tabloids. And if the title didn’t make it painfully obvious, it also mulls over the nature of truth and how journalism and printing affects the perception of what’s true. (It also tried to say something about privilege during the climax, I think, but that one was very muddled.) This book has a lot of interesting themes and ideas, but it is not particularly subtle about them.

I’m not often much for mystery plots, but I didn’t mind this one. Part of that is because it’s less of “a mystery” than many smaller mysteries in a trench coat. William is trying to untangle all the pieces of who framed Lord Vetinari. But there’s also a cast of fascinating characters and strange happenings to keep that from feeling too mystery-heavy. The talking dog is back, and he’s at least in an interesting situation this time, even if he’s no more likeable. There’s a vampire on staff at the newspaper who takes photographs and is experimenting with using flashes of darkness instead of light to take pictures. There’s the New Firm, a pair of hit men who go by the names Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip. They start out somewhat comedic (at least in Mr. Tulip’s desperate attempts to pick up a drug addiction, consuming all sorts of weird and unpleasant things along the way), but turn into one of the darkest plot lines I recall happening in a Discworld book. And there’s also the Watch, trying to do their jobs with all of William’s meddling.

The Truth is definitely less funny than some of the other Discworld books, but it was entertaining the whole way through and quite fun at times, even if I didn’t end up actually laughing. It has interesting things to say (even if they are SIGNIFICANTLY less subtle than I’ve come to expect from Sir Terry) the plot is solid and kept my interest, the cast of characters was strong, and the ending wrapped everything up neatly, including a few plot threads I had forgotten about. On the whole, it’s an enjoyable, if a bit in-your-face, entry into both Discworld canon and the Industrial Revolution arc.

(And as a note that’s only relevant to the audiobook, my favorite Discworld narrator Nigel Planer has still been replaced with some guy named Steve, the guy who did a terrible job on Carrot’s voice in The Fifth Elephant and also did a terrible job on Death’s voice in The Truth. It’s not relevant unless you read the audiobook, but I am not a fan of Steve.)

The Discworld series:

1. The Colour of Magic
2. The Light Fantastic
3. Equal Rites
4. Mort
5. Sourcery
6. Wyrd Sisters
7. Pyramids
8. Guards! Guards!
9. Eric
10. Moving Pictures
11. Reaper Man
12. Witches Abroad
13. Small Gods
14. Lords and Ladies
15. Men at Arms
16. Soul Music
17. Interesting Times
18. Maskerade
19. Feet of Clay
20. Hogfather
21. Jingo
22. The Last Continent
23. Carpe Jugulum
24. The Fifth Elephant
25. The Truth
26. Thief of Time
27. The Last Hero
28. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
29. Night Watch
30. The Wee Free Men
31. Monstrous Regiment
32. A Hat Full of Sky
33. Going Postal
34. Thud!
35. Wintersmith
36. Making Money
37. Unseen Academicals
38. I Shall Wear Midnight
39. Snuff
40. Raising Steam
41. The Shepherd’s Crown

Review: Your Best Apocalypse Now

Title: Your Best Apocalypse Now

Author: Taylor Hohulin

Genre: Comedy with elements of supernatural, apocalyptic, and even mystery, but hard to fully categorize

Trigger Warnings: Fatphobia (mentions), injury (mentions), violence (brief), unreality (mild)

Back Cover:

Daniel Blake isn’t a prophet, but by the time two angels show up on his couch with questions about his visions, he’s in too deep to come clean.

When Daniel wrote Your Best Apocalypse Now, it was supposed to be a scam. Instead, it was an accurate breakdown of the official plan for the apocalypse. The only problem? Doomsday hasn’t gone according to plan. When the appointed time comes (October 15, 2021, at precisely 10:56 pm, Central Standard Time, if you’re curious), the great world-devouring beast Fyarthlohopp is a complete no-show. Now the angels want answers, and they think Daniel has them.

Daniel wouldn’t mind if the end of the world got postponed a little longer—he is, after all, somewhat attached to the world in question—so he joins the angels on a quest to investigate how Fyarthlohopp could miss such a crucial appointment. The way Daniel sees it, if he’s going to save the world, the best place he can be is with the creatures tasked with its destruction.

As Daniel embarks on a journey filled with strange creatures, alternate dimensions, and a surprising number of offices, one question burns bright in his mind and refuses to go away: How does one sabotage an apocalypse, anyway?

Review:

I’ve had this book on my to-read list for years – possibly since even before the book came out. I’ve had spoken to the author previously when he sent me a review copy of his book The Marian, and I can’t remember if he told me Your Best Apocalypse Now was in the works or if I just found it following one of his author pages. Regardless, I never got around to finishing the rest of the Marian series (I have a bad habit of saying “I can’t wait to see where this series is going!” and then never actually doing that), but I wanted to read this one so much that I eventually broke down and bought the thing.

Now, at first glance you might go, “Jay, you don’t generally like comedies.” Which is usually true. However, what I do like is weird, wacky, unique, and original takes on religious topics. And a scammer prophet pretending to help angels investigate why the apocalypse didn’t happen so he can actually stop it from happening sounded exactly up my alley. Plus I remember Taylor being a good writer from when I read The Marian (admittedly almost a decade ago), so I figured it would at least be well-written.

Now, after all that preamble, let’s get into my thoughts on the book itself.

This is one of those light, fun books that really isn’t taking itself – or anything else – too seriously. Even though the plot is based around the end of the world and the complete destruction of humanity, there’s very little that’s actually dark or serious. Even looking at the trigger warnings, there aren’t many. It leans hard into its comedic elements and is largely light, funny, and above all, absurd.

I think the absurdity is what I liked about it so much. The unexpected and absurd, after all, is what I tend to find funniest. A combination end-of-the-world prediction and self-help book written entirely as a cash grab that turns out to be right? Hilarious. (And I legitimately want to read that book.) The great world-devouring beast having an office with a bored receptionist? Hysterical. Ridiculous and slightly heretical portrayals of God and angels? Funny and fascinating. Some of the one-liners fell flat, but more were on point. The chapter titles were fantastic. I legitimately laughed quite a bit. Your Best Apocalypse Now is the one thing that, in my experience, most comedy books struggle to be: Funny.

The plot is fairly straightforward – largely a series of “talk to this person, who gives you information that means you now need to talk to that person” quests as Daniel and his angels go from absurd situation to absurd situation in the quest to find the missing world-devouring beast. The characters were fun enough to follow around for a book and I did genuinely enjoy Daniel, but they weren’t particularly robust. What really shines here is the ridiculous, absurd concepts and ideas and the humor that the absurdity creates.

Your Best Apocalypse Now is what it set out to be: Light, fun, absurd, not very deep but enjoyable and funny all the same. (Although if you look beyond the surface, it does gently touch on some interesting theological ideas.) I found it genuinely funny in many places and enjoyed the whole book thoroughly. It’s a perfect book for some relaxing reading between heavier books, or if you just want something where you don’t have to worry about Themes or Motifs or Important Ideas. There aren’t any Important Ideas in this book – but there are a ton of absurd and funny ones, and if that’s what you want, this book will deliver.

Review: He Who Drowned the World

Title: He Who Drowned the World

Series: Radiant Emperor duology #2

Author: Shelley Parker-Chan

Genre: Historical Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Violence, blood, injury, death, bullying, self-harm (graphic), grief (severe), sexual content (explicit), misogyny, ableism, sexual assault, miscarriage, infidelity, murder, child death, parent death (mentions), suicidal ideation, body dysmorphia, homophobia, that complicated sexual trauma where you have sex when you don’t really want to as a means to get something else

Spoiler Warning: This book is second in a series, and reading beyond this point will expose you to spoilers of the first book, She Who Became the Sun.

Back Cover:

How much would you give to win the world?

Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding high after her victory that tore southern China from its Mongol masters. Now she burns with a new desire: to seize the throne and crown herself emperor.

But Zhu isn’t the only one with imperial ambitions. Her neighbor in the south, the courtesan Madam Zhang, wants the throne for her husband—and she’s strong enough to wipe Zhu off the map. To stay in the game, Zhu will have to gamble everything on a risky alliance with an old enemy: the talented but unstable eunuch general Ouyang, who has already sacrificed everything for a chance at revenge on his father’s killer, the Great Khan.

Unbeknownst to the southerners, a new contender is even closer to the throne. The scorned scholar Wang Baoxiang has maneuvered his way into the capital, and his lethal court games threaten to bring the empire to its knees. For Baoxiang also desires revenge: to become the most degenerate Great Khan in history—and in so doing, make a mockery of every value his Mongol warrior family loved more than him.

All the contenders are determined to do whatever it takes to win. But when desire is the size of the world, the price could be too much for even the most ruthless heart to bear…

Review:

This is a hard book to review. Not because it was bad, or even because I’m ambivalent about it – on the contrary, it was spectacular and I loved it. Even having read the first book nearly two years ago, it didn’t take me long to get back into the story. It kept me engaged throughout and even got my heart speeding up in a few particularly tense scenes. It was, above all, astonishingly good.

And I think that’s a large part of what makes it hard to review. I can’t share all the emotions it made me feel by writing about it. To get the full experience, you have to read it yourself. It’s vivid and intense and full of twists I didn’t see coming but probably should have and the kind of book that leaves you completely exhausted at the end because you’ve been feeling so much along the way.

Another part of what makes this hard to review is how utterly dark it is. The first book was dark, too, don’t get me wrong. Zhu is not a good person. She is ruthless and ambitious and claims she is willing to sacrifice anything to reach her goal, and this book puts that to the test. This is also a book where Zhu starts to challenge the bounds of a likeable character. In the first book, she was ruthless and ambitious and violent and did a lot of really horrible things. But in the context of a world that would rather let her starve than inconvenience a man, it didn’t seem unreasonable. In this book, she had reached some measure of security – though still under threat, she was one of the four dominant military and political powers of the area. But her ambition to be the greatest kept her pushing onwards, even as she destroyed others in the process. She was still a dynamic, compelling character and I never really stopped rooting for her, but as the book progressed I found myself repeatedly confronting the reality of her actions and not really being sure how to feel about them. In some ways, it feels weird to even apply moral judgements here, though I can’t fully explain why. But eventually both I and Zhu were looking at the consequences of her ambitions and wondering if it was really worth all that.

(Yet another thing I appreciate about this series: None of the women in these books – whether or not you want to count Zhu and her ambiguous gender identity as a woman – are shamed for their ambition or treated any worse than the men for their crimes. The society is blatantly misogynistic, but the narrative refuses to be.)

General Ouyang was a major player in the last book, and he still is in this one, but to a lesser degree. Some of that is because of his arc. Following on the events from the climax of book one, his is an equal but opposite story to Zhu. While Zhu’s ambitions propelled her to further heights, Ouyang’s relentless pursuit of revenge drove him to further lows. Zhu’s resolve clarified as Ouyang’s mind descended into chaos. I found myself mainly feeling compassion as he destroyed himself on the teeth of his own self-loathing. I wish he could have had a better ending, but he was so far gone that I think he got the best he could.

This book, being the last in the series, was an ending for every character, though not all of them died. Writing-wise, their endings made sense, fit with their arcs, and felt narratively satisfying. On a personal level, so many of them deserved better. Xu Da deserved better. Ma deserved better. Ouyang deserved better. Even Baoxiang deserved better (he deserved better last book, and even before – he is yet another case of an antagonist who I really just feel bad for).

And this brings me to the final reason this book is so hard to review: There is just too much to say. I haven’t said anything about Baoxiang’s story, even though he was a point of view narrator. I haven’t talked about the gender politics involved in this story, or the absolutely spot-on depictions of that very specific and hard-to-define type of sexual trauma where you have sex when you really don’t want to or with someone you don’t want to have sex with as a means to get something else, or the theme of being seen in a gendered body (and, to a lesser extent, a visibly disabled body), or how it’s paced so well that it feels like so much is happening without ever feeling rushed or monotonous, or the really awesome historical setting, or the ghosts.

If I talked about every amazing thing in this book, I could go on forever. But I’ve focused this review mainly on the characters, because despite all the action and adventure and ghosts and politics and invasions, this is a story about these characters and how their actions, good, bad, or otherwise, shape (and often end) the lives of the people around them and, ultimately, the course of history. This feels like a book (and, honestly, a series) that you could keep re-reading and discover something new every time. (It helps that these books are long.) So few sequels live up to their predecessor, but this one does – but it’s also unique to the point where I can’t say whether She Who Became the Sun or He Who Drowned the World is better because they’re both so good for different reasons and in different ways.

I’m running out of eloquent ways to say “this is an amazing book, you should read the whole series,” so there you go. This is an amazing book. So was the first one. You should read both – especially if you like stories that show your emotions no mercy.

The Radiant Emperor duology:

1. She Who Became the Sun
2. He Who Drowned the World

Review: Dream Runners

Title: Dream Runners

Author: Shveta Thakrar

Genre: Portal Fantasy (YA)

Trigger Warnings: Memory loss, violence, blood (mentions), death, parent death (mentions), grief, panic attacks, confinement, forced marriage

Back Cover:

Seven years ago, Tanvi was spirited away to the subterranean realm of Nagalok, where she joined the ranks of the dream runners: human children freed of all memory and emotion, charged with harvesting mortal dreams for the consumption of the naga court.

Venkat knows a different side of Nagalok. As apprentice to the influential Lord Nayan, he shapes the dream runners’ wares into the kingdom’s most tantalizing commodity. And Nayan has larger plans for these mortal dreams: with a dreamsmith of Venkat’s talent, he believes he can use them to end a war between nagas and their ancient foe, the garudas.

But when one of Tanvi’s dream harvests goes awry, she begins to remember her life on Earth. Panicked and confused, she turns to the one mortal in Nagalok who can help: Venkat. And as they search for answers, a terrifying truth begins to take shape—one that could turn the nagas’ realm of dreams into a land of waking nightmare.

Review:

I didn’t have high expectations when picking this one up. It gave me “mediocre YA romance” vibes, and I can’t really explain why. But I am a sucker for books featuring mythologies I’m not super familiar with, and for as interesting as Indian mythology is, I don’t know a whole lot about it. So I decided to give it a chance.

In many ways, this book does fall a little flat. The narrative assumes a base knowledge of Indian terms and phrases that I just don’t have, so I was frequently nudged out of immersion by an unfamiliar term and have to either Google or guess at the meaning. The descriptions were largely limited to color and shape, and occasionally size and shininess, making a visually rich world that lacked the multisensory richness that would have made it feel truly engaging. Aside from Tanvi and Venkat, the characters were well-rounded but largely uninteresting. And I guessed the big devastating twist really early.

But most of these things I only really noticed in retrospect. I read through Dream Runners fairly quickly and stayed engaged the whole time. And that’s because there is one thing this book does spectacularly well: emotions. Tanvi and Venkat alternate narration and both had different but vivid emotions they were going through. Tanvi especially, as she went through confusing, painful emotional process of emerging from the dream runner mental state and regaining her memories, had such vivid, realistic, engaging feelings that they covered over a multitude of confusing terminology and lifeless descriptions. The sheer emotionality of this story hit the perfect balance – it was sharp and intense without tipping over into corny and melodramatic. Regardless of the other flaws in this book, the emotional aspect is spot-on.

There was also an interesting theme of sisterhood and conflict running throughout the book. A large part of Tanvi’s journey as she gets her memory back is her sister – memories of her, her sister as she is now, seven years later, and the ongoing conflict between them. For most of the book, the naga and garuda conflict felt like an irritating distraction from what actually should be an emotional, personal story. But when it comes to a head in the climax, it actually ties into the theme of conflict between sisters.

I also have to briefly mention the romance (because it’s a YA book featuring one female and one male protagonist, there can’t not be a romance). I kept picturing Venkat as significantly older than Tanvi, so it felt a little weird for that. But the romance part was short, sweet, and very, very minor, which I appreciated. It added to the ending, but neither character spent too much time dwelling on it while they were supposed to be doing other stuff, which I think is generally the right way to do romances.

Ultimately, the book as a whole seemed a little flat. It was good, but not great; entertaining, but not engrossing. The world was solid and had good potential, but seemed to be missing a fundamental richness that would make it feel full and vibrant. But the plot on the whole was good, if a little predictable, and the emotions were spectacularly done. It’s certainly not the best book I’ve ever read, but it’s perfectly good.

Review: Dauntless

Title: Dauntless

Author: Elisa A. Bonnin

Genre: Fantasy (technically YA, but doesn’t feel specifically YA)

Trigger Warnings: Death (severe), violence (severe), blood, injury, gore, animal injury, animal death, mind control, betrayal, grief, parent death (mentions), emotional abuse (not of protagonist), murder (mentions), alcohol use (mentions), colonization, war, mental illness

Back Cover:

A teen girl must bring together two broken worlds in order to save her nation in this lush, Filipino-inspired young adult fantasy novel from debut author Elisa A. Bonnin.

“Be dauntless, for the hopes of the People rest in you.”

Seri’s world is defined by very clear rules: The beasts prowl the forest paths and hunt the People. The valiant explore the unknown world, kill the beasts, and gain strength from the armor they make from them. As an assistant to Eshai Unbroken, a young valor commander with a near-mythical reputation, Seri has seen first-hand the struggle to keep the beasts at bay and ensure the safety of the spreading trees where the People make their homes. That was how it always had been, and how it always would be. Until the day Seri encounters Tsana.

Tsana is, impossibly, a stranger from the unknown world who can communicate with the beasts – a fact that makes Seri begin to doubt everything she’s ever been taught. As Seri and Tsana grow closer, their worlds begin to collide, with deadly consequences. Somehow, with the world on the brink of war, Seri will have to find a way to make peace.

Review:

In my last library trip, I picked up two books, and this is actually the one I was less excited about. Both the cover and description seemed weak and just a tiny bit corny. However, the concept of the beasts that may not be as antagonistic as previously thought and the Filipino inspiration were enough that I decided to give it a shot.

And oh boy. It sucked me in within just a few pages and I blazed right through almost four hundred intense and rich pages. I had to go back and read paragraphs again sometimes because I would inadvertently skip huge chunks of the text in my excitement to find out what happens.

We’ll start with the simple – the world. The rainforest where people live on platforms on huge trees is not a very complicated setting, but it’s unique and vivid and very cool. There are some very neat details about society, as well, such as “marks” (which I gather are something like tattoos) to commemorate important things in your life and the way every city, town, and settlement is just … a single tree. There may not be a ton of depth to explore, but the breadth is spectacular. The characters do a lot of traveling and there are always new interesting sights for the reader and the characters. There was almost no exposition, but I still understand and appreciate the beautiful, lush, dangerous rainforest and the society built in the trees.

And in this society we have Seri and the valiants. Seri’s growth is spectacular. She starts off relatable in a quiet way. She ends up as an aide to a legendary commander not intentionally, but because she took the first opportunity she could to run away from the memory of something painful. But as the story goes on, just by virtue of doing her best and dealing with what’s put in front of her, she becomes the stuff of heroic legend – braver, more confident, and powerful (with just a touch of the overpowered protagonist trope I love). She’s in her late teens during this story, and it really feels like she matures into an adult.

Other valiants thread through the story, but Eshai is the one consistent through the whole book, and she played a much bigger role than I anticipated from the back cover. And I loved the whole concept of her. She’s a huge legendary folk hero, but in real life she’s disorganized, has a temper, good at what she does but still feels like she’s a little over her head, and not really excited to be a folk hero but if that’s the role she has to play she’s gonna do it. I also adored the dynamic between Eshai and Seri. It’s hard to describe, but it was very good.

If you like action, this book has quite a bit of action. Almost all of it is large-scale battles, with our protagonists and a bunch of unnamed or briefly-mentioned side characters facing off against beasts. The battles themselves are great – it’s warriors with superhuman abilities against beasts with other weird abilities, so it’s bound to be great. But this book also does something impressive: It makes these large-scale battles actually have consequences. Seri herself is rarely at risk of actually dying. But someone dies in every fight. And when they die, there are rites for the dead. There is grief and guilt and hurt. Even though we really don’t have much doubt that the people we care about will survive, even the deaths of minor characters have profound effects on our protagonists, and that makes the danger feel real and ensures the fights never feel cheap.

But after all of these great things, my absolute favorite thing is all the moral complexity in this story. At the beginning, everything is straightforward – the beasts kill people, so people need to defend against the beasts. But the more Seri learns about the beasts and Tsana’s people, the more unclear everything becomes. Maybe the valiant aren’t actually the good guys. There is eventually a single antagonist, but even there the morality isn’t strictly black and white – he may be doing horrible things, but I can understand his reasoning. The main tension for Seri is trying to do the right thing when it’s not clear what the right thing is, because for most of the book it’s very unclear what is right. Neither “side” is truly good or evil. There’s also a settler-colonization element that was good, if a little muddled.

This review got long, but that’s because there’s so many great things to say about it. It was a thrilling, engrossing read with a vibrant world, good characters with great growth through the story, and some really awesome battles. And it has a happy ending – I love a dangerous, violent book with a happy ending for the primary characters. I’m very glad I gave it a chance, because it was completely worth it.

Review: Shatter the Sky

Title: Shatter the Sky

Series: Shatter the Sky #1

Author: Rebecca Kim Wells

Genre: Fantasy (YA)

Trigger Warnings: Kidnapping, confinement, torture (mentions), injury, animal cruelty (mild), violence, fire, colonization (mentions)

Back Cover:

Raised among the ruins of a conquered mountain nation, Maren dreams only of sharing a quiet life with her girlfriend Kaia—until the day Kaia is abducted by the Aurati, prophetic agents of the emperor, and forced to join their ranks. Desperate to save her, Maren hatches a plan to steal one of the emperor’s coveted dragons and storm the Aurati stronghold.

If Maren is to have any hope of succeeding, she must become an apprentice to the Aromatory—the emperor’s mysterious dragon trainer. But Maren is unprepared for the dangerous secrets she uncovers: rumors of a lost prince, a brewing rebellion, and a prophecy that threatens to shatter the empire itself. Not to mention the strange dreams she’s been having about a beast deep underground…

With time running out, can Maren survive long enough to rescue Kaia from impending death? Or could it be that Maren is destined for something greater than she could have ever imagined?

Review:

Occasionally when I plan to come back to a book, I actually do. This is one of those books. Although to be fair, I gave up on it not because of the book itself, but because the audiobook was so quiet that even on max volume I couldn’t hear it over the background noise at my job. When I put it down, I knew I hadn’t given the book a fair chance, so I told myself I’d pick it up again in a different format.

And I’m glad I actually did. It didn’t grab me immediately, but I wanted to at least get past the setup that I attempted to listen to via audio. And by the time I got through that, the world grabbed me and the inciting incident had gotten the actual story started.

This story starts out really simple. Maren is perfectly happy to play second fiddle to her bold, brave, adventurous girlfriend, and would really rather stay in her mountain village instead of traveling the world. Kaia gets very little characterization besides being bold, brave, and adventurous (and Maren being deeply in love with her). I appreciated the rich descriptions of the village, but I really wasn’t connecting with any of the characters.

Then Kaia got taken and Maren decided she was going to steal a dragon, and the story really started to pick up. Maren’s straightforward plan goes sideways really quickly, as it turns out stealing an entire dragon is not as easy as it seems. Plus there’s a whole lot of other stuff going on, and the reader gains awareness of it as Maren does. What starts as mild racial tensions turns out to be a whole anti-imperialist rebellion. What starts as a simple steal-a-dragon quest turns into learning the truth about how the emperor deals treats his dragons and those who care for them. What starts as a simple goal to rescue a girl taken by the Aurati eventually reveals the significantly darker reality behind the Aurati as an institution.

I blazed through this book in two days because it’s very good. The world is well-drawn, I love dragons, I love the unique and creative way dragons are managed in this world. Maren herself is a great character who does some fantastic growth, and I love the way the slow revelations about what is actually going on are revealed in parallel with her growth – the more Maren comes out of her complacency and takes risks, the more both she and I learned the truth of this world. It was just very well done. Plus, you know, it’s hard to go wrong with dragons.

I didn’t realize going into this one that there’s a sequel, but I’m glad there is. There’s definitely more adventure to be had here, and I want to see where it goes. And of course no YA fantasy featuring a rebellion is going to be complete until the rebellion is done. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.

The Shatter the Sky series:

1. Shatter the Sky
2. Storm the Earth