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juushikaTitle: Certain Dark Things
Author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Narrator: Dan Bittner
Published: Thomas Dunne, 2016
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 325
Total Page Count: 215,535
Text Number: 679
Read Because: reading PoC/fan of vampires, audiobook and ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A vampire flees to Mexico City, and enlist the aid of an unremarkable street boy. The interesting bits here, the public existence of vampires and Vampire: The Masquerade-style diversity of vampire species, are original and engaging but delivered via infodumps (and an unnecessary explanatory appendix). The rest isn't particularly interesting—Moreno-Garcia nicely sidesteps the worst urban fantasy character clichés, and the setting works well to play socio-economic class against vampire/human interaction, but the most promising themes of the central relationship—power and consent, intimacy and violence—are buried under an underwhelming, straightforward romance. There's potential here, but it's too predictable, insufficiently confrontational; a missed opportunity. I don't recommend it.
(Avoid the audiobook. I read the first third in audio before switching to print; the profanity and gritty urban tone mesh poorly with the overacted narration, but are more natural in print.)
Title: God's War (Bel Dame Apocrypha Book 1)
Author: Kameron Hurley
Published: Night Shade Books, 2010
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 335
Total Page Count: 215,870
Text Number: 680
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A disgraced bounty hunter and her crew hunt down a politically-fraught target. Hurley drops the reader into the middle of a world and the beginning of a narrative—an uneasy combination that makes for a slow and confusing start. The action eventually picks up, but the plot never improves; there's too many double-crosses and kidnappings, not enough throughline. The worldbuilding fares better, but it isn't remarkable—it's unique, and certainly evocative (in a purposely unenjoyable way), but the gender-stratified societies grow repetitive, if not in detail, then in theme. But the heart of this book is its protagonist, a woman as grim as the world that created her, as violent, as difficult and flawed; she's crafted with obvious and infectious love. This book never came together for me on a technical level; it has the roughness of a debut. But I admire the inspiration—for the protagonist, and for a world where unlovely women not only have a place, but are commonplace. (I'm ambivalent about reading the sequels; this book I wouldn't particularly recommend.)
Title: Orleans
Author: Sherri L. Smith
Published: Putnam Juvenile, 2013
Rating: 1 of 5
Page Count: 325
Total Page Count: 216,195
Text Number: 681
Read Because: pulled from this list of Own Voices YA, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: After numerous hurricanes and a deadly endemic, New Orleans has become a dangerous, isolated land called Orleans. This is the story of two people's journey through it, and it's relentlessly, unproductively, unrealistically grimdark. The plot relies on poor communication (multiple dangerous journeys could be avoided if the characters just talked), accident and error (I appreciate that the supporting character is so blatantly ill-suited to this setting, and that his presumption and inability has clear negative consequences; I still wish he weren't here), and betrayal, kidnapping, rape threats, and other grimdark events which repeatedly violate the setting's established sanctuaries. Somewhere under that is vaguely interesting worldbuilding, and a fantastic protagonist whose voice and determination I adore—but would have preferred to see in almost any other narrative.
Author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Narrator: Dan Bittner
Published: Thomas Dunne, 2016
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 325
Total Page Count: 215,535
Text Number: 679
Read Because: reading PoC/fan of vampires, audiobook and ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A vampire flees to Mexico City, and enlist the aid of an unremarkable street boy. The interesting bits here, the public existence of vampires and Vampire: The Masquerade-style diversity of vampire species, are original and engaging but delivered via infodumps (and an unnecessary explanatory appendix). The rest isn't particularly interesting—Moreno-Garcia nicely sidesteps the worst urban fantasy character clichés, and the setting works well to play socio-economic class against vampire/human interaction, but the most promising themes of the central relationship—power and consent, intimacy and violence—are buried under an underwhelming, straightforward romance. There's potential here, but it's too predictable, insufficiently confrontational; a missed opportunity. I don't recommend it.
(Avoid the audiobook. I read the first third in audio before switching to print; the profanity and gritty urban tone mesh poorly with the overacted narration, but are more natural in print.)
Title: God's War (Bel Dame Apocrypha Book 1)
Author: Kameron Hurley
Published: Night Shade Books, 2010
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 335
Total Page Count: 215,870
Text Number: 680
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A disgraced bounty hunter and her crew hunt down a politically-fraught target. Hurley drops the reader into the middle of a world and the beginning of a narrative—an uneasy combination that makes for a slow and confusing start. The action eventually picks up, but the plot never improves; there's too many double-crosses and kidnappings, not enough throughline. The worldbuilding fares better, but it isn't remarkable—it's unique, and certainly evocative (in a purposely unenjoyable way), but the gender-stratified societies grow repetitive, if not in detail, then in theme. But the heart of this book is its protagonist, a woman as grim as the world that created her, as violent, as difficult and flawed; she's crafted with obvious and infectious love. This book never came together for me on a technical level; it has the roughness of a debut. But I admire the inspiration—for the protagonist, and for a world where unlovely women not only have a place, but are commonplace. (I'm ambivalent about reading the sequels; this book I wouldn't particularly recommend.)
Title: Orleans
Author: Sherri L. Smith
Published: Putnam Juvenile, 2013
Rating: 1 of 5
Page Count: 325
Total Page Count: 216,195
Text Number: 681
Read Because: pulled from this list of Own Voices YA, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: After numerous hurricanes and a deadly endemic, New Orleans has become a dangerous, isolated land called Orleans. This is the story of two people's journey through it, and it's relentlessly, unproductively, unrealistically grimdark. The plot relies on poor communication (multiple dangerous journeys could be avoided if the characters just talked), accident and error (I appreciate that the supporting character is so blatantly ill-suited to this setting, and that his presumption and inability has clear negative consequences; I still wish he weren't here), and betrayal, kidnapping, rape threats, and other grimdark events which repeatedly violate the setting's established sanctuaries. Somewhere under that is vaguely interesting worldbuilding, and a fantastic protagonist whose voice and determination I adore—but would have preferred to see in almost any other narrative.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-31 10:44 pm (UTC)I think Infidel is better than God's War but that Rapture backslides; if you're not in love with the series, you might read book 2 and then stop there.
no subject
Date: 2017-06-01 12:24 am (UTC)I feel like that set the tone for a lot of plotting.
I found myself comparing to Butler's Parable books, and Black women have a lot to say about humanity's capacity for awfulness, but the way race intersected with a blood typed society went almost entirely unexplored; and that the worldbuilding set up sanctuaries in that YA "proper nouns and universal social rules" style and then ... violated them—in the case of churches, violated them twice—
The cumulative effect felt gratuitous in an unproductive way.
Thanks for the head's up re: Bel Dame Apocrypha! That sounds like a good plan of action for me.