Review: Strike the Zither

Title: Strike the Zither

Series: Kingdom of Three #1

Author: Joan He

Genre: Fantasy (YA)

Trigger Warnings: Death, injury, blood, violence, war, parent death (mentions), terminal illness, alcohol use (mentions), child death (mentions), vomit (mentions), animal death (mentions)

Back Cover:

The Chinese classic Three Kingdoms reimagined with a lady Zhuge Liang.

The year is 414 of the Xin Dynasty, and chaos abounds. A puppet empress is on the throne, and three warlordesses each hope to claim the continent for themselves.

Only Zephyr knows it’s no contest.

Orphaned at a young age, Zephyr took control of her fate by becoming the best strategist of the land and serving under Xin Ren, a warlordess whose loyalty to the empress is double-edged—while Ren’s honor draws Zephyr to her cause, it also jeopardizes their survival in a war where one must betray or be betrayed. When Zephyr is forced to infiltrate an enemy camp to keep Ren’s followers from being slaughtered, she encounters the enigmatic Crow, an opposing strategist who is finally her match. But there are more enemies than one—and not all of them are human.

Review:

I didn’t realize when I picked this up that I’d already read one book by this author before – or at least attempted to read, as I DNF’ed Descendant of the Crane in 2021. But the back cover on this one sounded much more interesting, and I didn’t DNF the other book for being bad, just because I wasn’t able to get into it – which could very easily have been more about my mood than the book itself. So I gave this one a shot.

And at first, I was really glad I did. I didn’t love the world-building – I’ve read too many fantasies set in actual ancient China, so this Chinese-inspired world felt like a discordant mishmash of ideas instead of a cohesive world, but I could live with that. What I did like was Zephyr, who was clever, calculating, always three steps ahead of everyone else (a trait I love in a character), and some intriguing combination of dedicated to her warlordess and desperate to prove herself useful. And even though the plot involved a lot of politics, it wasn’t slow and managed to involve a fair bit of action and intrigue along the way.

The back cover really doesn’t tell you much about what’s in the book. The infiltration happens almost immediately, and while Crow is definitely an antagonist, he’s not really a major player in the story. Just about every bit of the story you think you’re going to read wraps up in part one. Then in part two things go way off the rails, and that’s where I started to really struggle.

My big criticism of the story itself is that it sacrifices background for speed, and that blunts any potential emotional impact. I don’t disagree with the choice – a long setup would have done the story a disservice. But often the reader finds out about crucial pieces of information the moment they’re supposed to be connected to an emotional moment, so the emotions have to share my attention with the process of mentally putting this new information into the overarching picture of the book. This also makes the big revelation at the start of part two feel unexpected, but in a jarring, random way. I may have had a different experience if I’d read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the Chinese classic that this series is based on, but I haven’t. So maybe this is true to the original, but it was still difficult for me.

The problem I had with part two, and the reason I won’t be continuing the series, is definitely a case of it’s not the book, it’s me. A major event at the end of part one and a character’s response to it at the beginning of part two resulted in one major character ending up in the body of another major character. I do not like body-swapping. I can’t even really explain why, it just makes me extremely uncomfortable. It’s worse if the body-swapped characters try to pretend that they are the person whose body they’re in, which also happens here. So I spent most of part two wanting to leave the situation but also hoping that the characters would get back to the right bodies, because I was sure I would start to like it again once the body-swapping thing was fixed. But based on the ending and reading the back cover for the sequel, I think the characters are likely to stay in the wrong bodies until near the end of book two. And I do not want to deal with that.

On the whole, this is not a bad book by any means. It had a lot of aspects that didn’t do it for me, personally, but that’s not a judgement on the book itself. I’m having a hard time expressing any sort of overall opinion about it because the biggest thing I didn’t like about it (and quite possibly the smaller thing I didn’t like as well) were all matters of personal opinion. I like the ideas, it’s well-written, and it kept my interest despite being fairly politics-heavy. It just has some elements that aren’t for me, personally – but might be for you.

The Kingdom of Three Duology:

1. Strike the Zither
2. Sound the Gong

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: 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: 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: Assassin of Reality

Title: Assassin of Reality

Series: Vita Nostra #2

Author: Marina & Sergey Dyachenko

Genre: Magical Realism

Trigger Warnings: Body horror, death, infidelity (mentions), sexual content (off-page), suicidal thoughts (severe), car crash (major), bullying (minor)

Spoiler Warning: This book is second in a series, and reading beyond this point will expose you to spoilers of the first book, Vita Nostra. (But honestly if you haven’t read Vita Nostra yet go do that, it’s spectacular.)

Back Cover:

The eagerly anticipated sequel to the highly acclaimed Vita Nostra takes readers to the next stage in Sasha Samokhina’s journey in a richly imagined world of dark academia in which grammar is magic—and not all magic is good.

In Vita Nostra, Sasha Samokhina, a third-year student at the Institute of Special Technologies, was in the middle of taking the final exam that would transform her into a part of the Great Speech. After defying her teachers’ expectations, Sasha emerges from the exam as Password, a unique and powerful part of speech. Accomplished and ready to embrace her new role, she soon learns her powers threaten the old world, and despite her hard work, Sasha is set to fail.

However, Farit Kozhennikov, Sasha’s dark mentor, finds a way to bring her out of the oblivion and back to the Institute for his own selfish purposes. Subsequently, Sasha must correct her mistakes before she is allowed to graduate and is forced to do what few are asked and even less achieve: to succeed and reverberate—becoming a part of the Great Speech and being one of the special few who dictate reality. If she fails, she faces a fate far worse than death: the choice is hers.

Years have passed around the Institute—and the numerous realities that have spread from Sasha’s first failure—but it is only her fourth year of learning what role she will play in shaping the world. Her teachers despise and fear her, her classmates distrust her, and a growing love—for a young pilot with no affiliation to the school—is fraught because a relationship means leverage, and Farit won’t hesitate to use it against her.

Planes crash all the time. Which means Sasha needs to rewrite the world so that can’t happen…or fail for good.

Review:

I have made no secret of how much I loved Vita Nostra. I knew it was first in a series, but most likely due to the books originally being written in Russian, I could find no information online about any other books in the series existing, let alone when they came out. So I was absolutely delighted to stumble on book two, Assassin of Reality, completely by accident while browsing the library. However, I was a little nervous to start reading it, for a couple reasons:

1. Vita Nostra set a spectacularly high bar, and there was a solid chance book two just wouldn’t live up to it.
2. It has been almost two years since I read Vita Nostra, and reading a sequel so long after the original book usually results in the sequel being less enjoyable just because I’ve forgotten so much of the first book.
3. I got this copy as a physical book, and after going back to reading physical books after reading audiobooks almost exclusively for two years, physical books are just less immersive in general.

So I picked up this book full of hope that it would live up to its predecessor and concern that for a variety of reasons, it wouldn’t.

Let’s get the big question out of the way first: Did Assassin of Reality live up to the high expectations that Vita Nostra set? Not really. But that doesn’t make it bad – and it wasn’t for the reasons I expected.

Assassin of Reality has so many of the things that I loved about Vita Nostra. Impossible studies, a weird and vaguely incomprehensible magic system that seems to have definite yet undefinable rules, an intimate view of a character who may or may not be going mad (although we’re pretty sure she’s not going mad at this point), time as an inconvenience that can be changed and molded and is nowhere close to immutable, teachers by turn human and decidedly not human, a character so absurdly powerful that some faculty would rather see her dead than upend the balance. In many ways, there’s a lot to enjoy, and I did enjoy.

But it was also significantly less than Vita Nostra. It felt less bizarre and surreal, even though the events were objectively even more bizarre and surreal, because I’m not experiencing this wild and off-kilter world for the first time anymore. It’s also significantly shorter – which in some ways makes sense, since Vita Nostra covered three years at the Institute while Assassin of Reality only covers one. But it also did the story a major disservice. The main story here is Sasha grappling with her place in the universe and the strange cosmology of the Great Speech, to the detriment of everything else. The impossible studies got shoved to the side. Relationships with former classmates were almost nonexistent at the start and completely dissolved by the end. Even conflicts with teachers and the actual logistics of being in school were glossed over, to the point where I think she entirely skipped the spring semester? The story did, at least, even if Sasha didn’t. For a book that’s supposed to be about Sasha’s last year in an impossible school before she either becomes omnipotent or ceases to exist, it spends a whole lot of time watching her go through a magic version of a petulant teenager phase.

This review is a lot more scathing than I feel about the book, to be honest. While reading, I did enjoy it. It was absorbing and engrossing, and I genuinely wanted to keep reading through the whole thing. But looking back, I think there’s a lot of potential that was wasted. There’s nothing wrong with a story about Sasha grappling with her place in this cosmology and having a complicated romance with a guy who has no idea about any of the magical weirdness Sasha is involved in. But having those be the focus of the story to the exclusion of everything else left it not as strong as it could have been. Because of events at the end of Vita Nostra, Sasha has to start her education almost completely from scratch, and she takes on the nearly omnipotent Farit Kozhennikov head-on, and yet those are background elements. I can’t help but notice how it could have been so much more.

That said, it was still a solid read. I didn’t understand much of it, but I expected that and don’t really feel the need to understand. The world is still wonderfully bizarre, and getting weirder as Sasha gets more powerful. I hope she does finally manage to take Farit Kozhennikov down. And I do legitimately want to find out what happens next. So I will be reading the next book, whenever I can find it. But if you want to read Vita Nostra and then not bother with the rest of the series, that’s fine too. Let’s be real, this doesn’t feel like the kind of story that will have a tidy ending, anyway.

The Vita Nostra series:

1. Vita Nostra
2. Assassin of Reality

Review: Naamah

Title: Naamah

Author: Sarah Blake

Genre: Strong Magical Realism feel, but it’s also set way back in biblical times so potentially Historical Fantasy … it’s definitely weird and fantasy-adjacent, but it’s hard to nail down

Trigger Warnings: Death, child death, animal death (graphic), pregnancy, childbirth, excrement, gore, sexual content, infidelity, unreality, incest

Back Cover:

A wildly imaginative novel of the reluctant heroine who rescued life on earth.

With the coming of the Great Flood—the mother of all disasters—only one family was spared, drifting on an endless sea, waiting for the waters to subside. We know the story of Noah, moved by divine vision to launch their escape. Now, in a work of astounding invention, acclaimed writer Sarah Blake reclaims the story of his wife, Naamah, the matriarch who kept them alive. Here is the woman torn between faith and fury, lending her strength to her sons and their wives, caring for an unruly menagerie of restless creatures, silently mourning the lover she left behind. Here is the woman escaping into the unreceded waters, where a seductive angel tempts her to join a strange and haunted world. Here is the woman tormented by dreams and questions of her own—questions of service and self-determination, of history and memory, of the kindness or cruelty of fate.

In fresh and modern language, Blake revisits the story of the Ark that rescued life on earth, and rediscovers the agonizing burdens endured by the woman at the heart of the story. Naamah is a parable for our time: a provocative fable of body, spirit, and resilience.

Review:

This book is dark, graphic, occasionally gross, and above all extremely weird. “Wildly imaginative” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

I picked it up mainly because I am all about mildly-to-severely blasphemous retellings of Bible stories. The story of Noah’s Ark, told from the perspective of Noah’s wife who doesn’t seem to be fully on board with their deity’s decision to genocide the world, seemed right up my alley. And there were indeed many things to like in this book.

Things I liked about Naamah:

• A raw and deeply human story about unnamed and unconsidered Biblical women (Naamah herself, but also her sons’ wives)
• The logistics of keeping eight people and probably thousands of animals alive and sane on a boat for nearly a year
• The emotions that come with being on a boat with a bunch of animals for nearly a year and basically being the only survivors of an intentional apocalypse
• Naamah herself, a woman who meets the living God face-to-face and still tells him to fuck off

As for what I didn’t like quite so much:

Now, I am no stranger to weird books. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I generally enjoy weird books. But this book is so weird in so many directions that I’m not at all sure what I’m supposed to make of it. It’s practically plotless, held together by sex scenes and extensive dream sequences, and for something that’s ostensibly some kind of Biblical reimagining contains a whole bunch of nonsense that doesn’t seem to fit anything.

We should probably talk about Abraham’s wife Sarai showing up as a time-traveling god-like figure. Or the sentient bird that can only talk when he’s sharing Naamah’s dreams. Or the angel living underwater with a bunch of dead children. Or that scene where Sarai takes Naamah to the present day and she watches Law & Order: SVU. We should probably talk about it, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to make of any of this.

Naamah has a unique problem where if you cut out the sex scenes, the dream sequences, and the weird stuff that feels discordant with the rest of the book, there isn’t a book. It’s part slice-of-life on the Ark and part magical mystical unreality I-don’t-even-know-what. I appreciate the sacrilege and the symbolism of Noah’s wife questioning the atrocity of the flood. But I’m unsure of the plot, point, purpose, moral, or any reason for this book to exist, and I’m unsure if there is one to find.

Is Naamah a good book? I’m not even sure how you judge a book like this. When I finished it, I found myself scrambling for meaning because there must surely be a point or idea or theme or something here, right? I was left with an overwhelming sense of what-in-the-world-did-I-just-read befuddlement. I legitimately have no idea what I’m supposed to take away from this story. Naamah has me well and truly stumped.

Review: Phoenix Extravagant

Title: Phoenix Extravagant

Author: Yoon Ha Lee

Genre: Historical Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: War, death, confinement, violence, blood, parent death (mentions), romantic partner death (mentions), injury, body horror (mild), torture (mild), excrement (mentions), colonialism, racism (mild), sexual content

Back Cover:

Gyen Jebi isn’t a fighter or a subversive. They just want to paint.

One day they’re jobless and desperate; the next, Jebi finds themself recruited by the Ministry of Armor to paint the mystical sigils that animate the occupying government’s automaton soldiers.

But when Jebi discovers the depths of the Razanei government’s horrifying crimes–and the awful source of the magical pigments they use–they find they can no longer stay out of politics.

What they can do is steal Arazi, the ministry’s mighty dragon automaton, and find a way to fight…

Review:

I really like the idea of magical art. That, and the idea of stealing a magical dragon automaton to fight against an invading government sounded hopelessly cool. Plus a nonbinary protagonist in a magical East Asian setting had to be great. I had pretty high hopes for this book.

And overall, it was … fine. It was good enough to finish and had some interesting ideas, but it never fully grabbed me.

The world was interesting, although I spent more time than was good for my story comprehension trying to place exactly what the setting was. (It took me a while to determine it was probably a fantasy version of the Japanese occupation of Korea, but I still wasn’t completely sure of that until I checked the author’s site.) I also found the societal structure and the role of an artist in how society was set up interesting. I don’t know how much was historically accurate and how much was made up for the story (besides the obvious), but it was interesting regardless.

Normally I spend some time in my reviews talking about the characters. But that’s hard to do here because there’s not a lot to them. Jebi gets into conflict with their sister because of differing values – their sister values patriotism and ideals, while Jebi values survival more. (And that made it easy to dislike their sister, since I also value survival more.) Jebi enjoyed painting and art, and that’s about it. From the back cover, I expected them to have a bit more revolutionary spirit. But in fact, Jebi can’t fight at all and actively avoids political involvement.

That strongly contributed to the fact that very little happens in the book. The whole stealing-the-dragon part doesn’t happen until nearly three quarters of the way through. It had its moments of awesomeness, but overall it was incredibly slow and tipped over into dull and boring several times. Jebi spends a lot of time feeling guilty and sorry for themself, and even the bits about the value of art as a cultural artifact and for its own sake felt like an aside that never really got fleshed out.

I like a lot of the ideas here. The ideas were why I picked up the book, and the foundations here are solid. As it is, Phoenix Extravagant isn’t bad. I enjoyed it enough to finish it, and there were some genuinely great moments. But on the whole, I think I would have liked it more as a faster, more action-based story with a more dynamic protagonist.

Review: City of Miracles

Title: City of Miracles

Series: The Divine Cities #3

Author: Robert Jackson Bennett

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, blood, injury (severe), torture, murder, guns, body horror, parent death, child death, trauma, trauma flashbacks (mentions), romantic partner death

Spoiler Warning: This book is third in a series, and reading beyond this point will inevitably expose you to spoilers of the previous books.

Back Cover:

Revenge. It’s something Sigrud je Harkvaldsson is very, very good at. Maybe the only thing.

So when he learns that his oldest friend and ally, former Prime Minister Shara Komayd, has been assassinated, he knows exactly what to do–and that no mortal force can stop him from meting out the suffering Shara’s killers deserve.

Yet as Sigrud pursues his quarry with his customary terrifying efficiency, he begins to fear that this battle is an unwinnable one. Because discovering the truth behind Shara’s death will require him to take up arms in a secret, decades-long war, face down an angry young god, and unravel the last mysteries of Bulikov, the city of miracles itself. And–perhaps most daunting of all–finally face the truth about his own cursed existence.

Review:

Like Hogfather, I read this book in fits and starts due to the unfortunate fact that when reading books at work, I am at work. That definitely affected my enjoyment of the story. With a story as complex as this one, it definitely affected my understanding, as well.

City of Miracles follows Sigrud, a whole new protagonist. I wasn’t concerned about this protagonist switch because unlike Mulaghesh from book two, I already knew and liked Sigrud as a pretty major player in the previous books. I was concerned that I would be upset at Shara’s death, because I liked her so much in the first book. But she hasn’t been the protagonist for a while now and she’d changed in the couple decades since book one. I found it didn’t feel as tragic as I’d expected.

This book is much lighter on the details of the world. Some of that is likely because of my stop-and-go reading style, which probably led to me missing some of the finer details. And some of it is because Sigrud is much less politically involved and much less curious about the intricate details of the divinities. In book one, Shara was a full-on nerd and that allowed a lot of foundation work for establishing a rich and complex world. Mulaghesh in book two was significantly less nerdy, but she knew a fair bit and was not averse to finding out more. Sigrud, though, didn’t care about the finer points of the divine or even the current situation. He’s a man of violence and just needed to know enough to figure out who he needed to injure. The foundations from the previous book were there, but it was sparse on the new details. It made the world feel a little less rich and full than in previous books.

What City of Miracles is, though, is the most thematic of the series. It explores societal progress and how it feels to those who knew how it used to be, cycles of violence and how traumatized children grow up to inflict trauma on others, and the cyclical nature of life and history. Especially with Sigrud, whose whole existence at this point is being able to withstand and dish out extreme amounts of pain and violence, his journey towards recognizing that suffering can’t and won’t redeem him mirrors the story as a whole.

Like the other two books in the series, the story is complex and multi-faceted. In the previous books, it was fitting, as such a rich and detailed world deserved a layered and complex story. In this one, with the world feeling less rich, it seemed unnecessarily complicated and even annoyingly so at times. It focuses much more on the action, which fits with Sigrud’s character, and the thematic elements than the details of the world and the reality-distorting cosmic horror of the divinities, making the complexities of the plot feel unnecessary and overdone at times. It felt longer than it needed to be, even though I can’t identify anything that really needed cutting out. But of course, this could all be because I read it in pieces instead of completely through like usual.

Despite my struggles with it and regardless of whether they were due to the book itself or my reading experience, City of Miracles kept me interested all the way through. Though it felt less robust in the world-building department, it definitely felt full and rich in emotion. It led to a bittersweet but fitting and satisfying conclusion. And though at the end I felt like I just wanted a little something more from it, it was a very solid conclusion to the series.

The Divine Cities series:

1. City of Stairs
2. City of Blades
3. City of Miracles

Review: City of Blades

Title: City of Blades

Series: The Divine Cities #2

Author: Robert Jackson Bennett

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, blood, gore, violence, war, body horror, child death, parent death (mentions), body horror, grief, murder, confinement, PTSD, trauma flashbacks, racism, sexual assault (mentions), slavery (in past), colonialism

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

Back Cover:

The city of Voortyashtan was once the home of the goddess of death, war and destruction, but now it’s little more than a ruin. General Turyin Mulaghesh is called out of retirement and sent to this hellish place to find a Saypuri secret agent who’s gone AWOL in the middle of a mission. But the ghosts of past wars have followed her there, and soon she begins to wonder what happened to the souls in the afterlife when the gods were defeated by her people. Do the dead sleep soundly in the land of death? Or do they have plans of their own?

Review:

After being surprised by the stunningly intricate world of City of Stairs, I was excited to continue the series. However, I was less excited when I found out book two followed not Shara, the protagonist of City of Stairs, but General Mulaghesh, a secondary character who didn’t get a lot of focus on book one. She was a perfectly fine character in a secondary role, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend an entire book with her.

Switching protagonists in the second book is always a risk, and for a while I didn’t think it was going to work out. I just didn’t like older, gruff career soldier Mulaghesh as much as I liked nerdy, clever Shara. But the stunningly intricate, richly detailed world is the best part of the series, and eventually it drew me back in. And by the halfway point, I had grown to like Mulaghesh, a semi-retired, traumatized soldier just trying to do the right thing.

There was less mythology in this book. Some of that is because the reader already has the context from book one and a lot of the details about the world and the divinities don’t need to be explained again. Some of that is because Mulaghesh is not a nerd like Shara and cares significantly less about the finer points of magic and dead divinities. There was some, but it was only plot-relevant details and less exploring interesting things. Although I did very much enjoy learning about a new divinity who was barely mentioned in book one.

The plot was a wild twisty thing. If you tried to put it in a box, the best option is probably “mystery,” but that’s way too small a word. Mulaghesh isn’t just trying to figure out who is behind this, but also why they’re doing it and what they’re even doing in the first place. There’s lots of investigating, which generally turns up weird stuff, and Mulaghesh doing her best to make the weird stuff mean something. If the world itself wasn’t so complex and detailed, I don’t think I would have put up with such a complex plot. But the Divine Cities series has one of the most intricate and detailed worlds I’ve read, so I was perfectly happy to puzzle through the baffling clues to a complicated mystery.

On occasion, though, the complexity tipped over into frustrating. In this case, there were valid reasons for keeping some secrets, bit nobody wanted to give Mulaghesh any useful information and after a while it got annoying. Conversely, nobody wanted to listen to Mulaghesh either, even though doing so would have saved a lot of trouble. And in the climax, every single possible thing that could get in her way did, which felt forced and overdone.

City of Blades wasn’t boring, but it was definitely slower paced. Personally, I think it could have been shorter. I also didn’t enjoy it as much as book one overall (but let’s be honest, very few sequels are as good as the first book). I still think this world is amazing, and I do intend to read book three, if for nothing else than I love learning about this setting and its dead divinities.

The Divine Cities series:

1. City of Stairs
2. City of Blades
3. City of Miracles

Review: Siege of Rage and Ruin

Title: Siege of Rage and Ruin

Series: Wells of Sorcery #3

Author: Django Wexler

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death (severe), blood, violence (severe), injury (severe), gore (mentions), war, mind control, body horror (mild), kidnapping, confinement, suicidal thoughts

Spoiler Warning: This is the third and final book in a trilogy, and reading beyond this point will expose you to spoilers of the first two books.

Back Cover:

Siege of Rage and Ruin is the explosive final adventure in Django Wexler’s The Wells of Sorcery trilogy, an action-packed epic fantasy saga.

Isoka has done the impossible–she’s captured the ghost ship Soliton.

With her crew of mages, including the love of her life Princess Meroe, Isoka returns to the empire that sent her on her deadly mission. She’s ready to hand over the ghost ship as ransom for her sister Tori’s life, but arrives to find her home city under siege. And Tori at the helm of a rebellion.

Neither Isoka’s mastery of combat magic, nor Tori’s proficiency with mind control, could have prepared them for the feelings their reunion surfaces. But they’re soon drawn back into the rebels’ fight to free the city that almost killed them.

Review:

If I had a nickel for every trilogy I’ve read about a violent teenage girl who took power from her deep rage and could sprout magical blades from her hands, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice. What’s even weirder is that even though both trilogies are very different in idea, I loved both stories and adored both angry violent hand-blade girls.

I had fairly low expectations for this final book. I adored Ship of Smoke and Steel, but had some major struggles with City of Stone and Silence that made me severely tone down my expectations for this book. On top of that, this book brings Isoka back to Kahnzoka, leaving behind the weird and wonderful settings I loved about the last two books for an unfortunately ordinary city. So I really was not expecting to enjoy it very much.

But, surprising nobody more than myself, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

To start with, I didn’t dislike Tori nearly as much as I did last book. I can’t entirely put my finger on why, either. It’s probably a lot of factors. I have the context of her from the previous book, so she doesn’t feel like a strange new character anymore. There’s less contrast between her parts and Isoka’s, since they’re both in the same setting. There’s significantly more action, which leaves less time for romance and Tori beating herself up (there still is some, but it’s no longer her main focus). And generally, her stress over the pressure of responsibility is much more relatable than anything she did last book. I definitely liked Isoka more, but I didn’t dread Tori’s parts this time around.

Isoka is still Isoka. She’s still angry, violent, incredibly powerful, and utterly awesome. I love her so much. And being back in the city she left at the beginning of book one really emphasized her character growth. I didn’t realize how much she’d changed over the course of this trilogy, and discovering it through being back in the same context was interesting.

Now that the sisters are actually together – really for the first time in the whole series – they had an interesting sibling dynamic going on. And I related to both sides of it. I understood Tori’s frustration with growing and changing and coming into her own but Isoka expecting her not to have grown or changed at all. And I also related to Isoka’s struggles to accept that Tori has grown up and is no longer the child who needs her big sister for constant guidance and protection. (My youngest sister is in college now and I am feeling that one hard.)

Kahnzoka as a setting is significantly less interesting than Soliton or the Harbor or all the other weird and cool magical stuff Isoka has encountered throughout this series. But the story was more about the rebellion than the setting itself, so it was acceptable. There is still plenty of action and plenty of fights where Isoka gets to shine. There are less absurdly powerful protagonist moments (or the “protagonist does the impossible” variation that Isoka tends to favor), but there were still a few. There are interesting and well-developed secondary and minor characters (including Jack, who is my absolute favorite secondary character of the whole series), plenty of magic awesomeness, and some surprisingly interesting parts about the material challenges of running a rebellion.

It’s definitely not perfect. There are very few real surprises or anything new to uncover (although I didn’t mind this too much, as there was enough action to keep me interested). I got frustrated with Tori and Isoka at the beginning, because they were having some issues that could be completely solved if they actually communicated, but that was pretty much over after the beginning. Overall, despite a less-than-thrilling setting, Siege of Rage and Ruin is a solid and enjoyable conclusion to this series.

The Wells of Sorcery series:

1. Ship of Smoke and Steel
2. City of Stone and Silence
3. Siege of Rage and Ruin