Title: Wishtree
Author: Katherine Applegate
Narrator: Nancy Linari
Published: Listening Library, 2017
Rating: 1.5 of 5
Page Count: 220
Total Page Count: 511,235
Text Number: 1846
Read Because: fan of the author & more children's lit on audio, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A talking red oak tells the story of events unfolding in the local neighborhood. I appreciate the interjection of Nature Facts, and Applegate's heavy-handed messaging can totally work for me, see: Willodeen. But it doesn't here. Which strains credulity more, the talking wildlife who mostly talk about humans, or the local police who care a whole lot about hate crimes? This is twee, with earnest messaging that overrides common sense.
Title: Apostles of Mercy (Noumena Book 3)
Author: Lindsay Ellis
Published: St. Martin's Press, 2024
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 465
Total Page Count: 511,790
Text Number: 1847
Read Because: reading the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Cora and Ampersand perpetually procrastinate their departure as Cora falls in with Paris and physeterines are discovered on Earth. This isn't the book I wanted it to be, and much of my reading experience was adjusting my expectations and trying to figure out if the book it actually is is any good.
Because this is more of a lateral move than a progression, recycling the Kaveh relationship in Paris (and the supporting characters continue to feel indistinct, like Paris, or distinct-but-distinctly-awful, like Sol), continuing to distance the narrative from Cora's PoV (my perpetual regret) and Cora and Ampersand's relationship (via a contrived conflict rooted more in miscommunication than bad communication, which sucks), and lingering to explore the world-as-is. Leaving Earth to burn would be thematically nihilistic, so I admire, on that level, what it means to linger; and the narrative hook for book 4 promises that that lingering could still be alien and weird and ethically questionable. But the hook for this book was left dangling, which makes me distrustful; and, on a creative level, leaving could have been so bold & weird & insular & codependent &c, and that's what I want - that's what sold the first book, and that's what I'm waiting for in the sequels.
In the end, I did like this. But I like it because Ellis is tackling themes and tropes I'm obsessed on an interpersonal level I adore. There's still so much that compels me and makes me want more: sign me up for Nikola-Paris-Cora-Ampersand-Nikola, which forms a phyle that violates no mores but the little issue of bestiality, and for the long-awaited alien sexytimes. Hell, I even like the physeterine worldbuilding; Ellis's aliens are convincingly, compellingly alien. But the series is stagnating, deviating, and I'm having to search harder for the bits I want to latch on to.
Title: Freeze Tag
Author: Caroline B. Cooney
Published: Scholastic, 1992
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 175
Total Page Count: 511,965
Text Number: 1848
Read Because: reviewed by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija, borrowed from Open Library
Review: As a teen, blissfully happy in first love, our protagonist is confronted by the consequences of a strange event from her childhood. Teenage love, blackmail, the world's weirdest superpower and a winter setting that fits it perfectly, and Cooney's remarkable, metaphor-laden, taut voice - the last of which elevates this far beyond ... what, its deserving? the YA thriller genre? maybe just my expectations. This is worth it for the childhood prologue alone, which is phenomenal; the teenage parts grow melodramatic, but I like that this finds so much tension in the lingering, haunting imprint of that one childhood evening. Of course an outsider wouldn't believe: our protagonist can barely believe - it's too strange, too unsettling, for her to view directly, and that strengthens the horror elements in a book that sometimes errs towards thriller territory. The thematic development has some YA heavy-handedness, but the uneasy ending is equally successful, especially compared to, again, my expectations of its particular trope.
Somehow, I never encountered Cooney as a kid, but she was ridiculously prolific, particularly in this genre. I'll have to look into more of her work.
Author: Katherine Applegate
Narrator: Nancy Linari
Published: Listening Library, 2017
Rating: 1.5 of 5
Page Count: 220
Total Page Count: 511,235
Text Number: 1846
Read Because: fan of the author & more children's lit on audio, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A talking red oak tells the story of events unfolding in the local neighborhood. I appreciate the interjection of Nature Facts, and Applegate's heavy-handed messaging can totally work for me, see: Willodeen. But it doesn't here. Which strains credulity more, the talking wildlife who mostly talk about humans, or the local police who care a whole lot about hate crimes? This is twee, with earnest messaging that overrides common sense.
Title: Apostles of Mercy (Noumena Book 3)
Author: Lindsay Ellis
Published: St. Martin's Press, 2024
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 465
Total Page Count: 511,790
Text Number: 1847
Read Because: reading the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Cora and Ampersand perpetually procrastinate their departure as Cora falls in with Paris and physeterines are discovered on Earth. This isn't the book I wanted it to be, and much of my reading experience was adjusting my expectations and trying to figure out if the book it actually is is any good.
Because this is more of a lateral move than a progression, recycling the Kaveh relationship in Paris (and the supporting characters continue to feel indistinct, like Paris, or distinct-but-distinctly-awful, like Sol), continuing to distance the narrative from Cora's PoV (my perpetual regret) and Cora and Ampersand's relationship (via a contrived conflict rooted more in miscommunication than bad communication, which sucks), and lingering to explore the world-as-is. Leaving Earth to burn would be thematically nihilistic, so I admire, on that level, what it means to linger; and the narrative hook for book 4 promises that that lingering could still be alien and weird and ethically questionable. But the hook for this book was left dangling, which makes me distrustful; and, on a creative level, leaving could have been so bold & weird & insular & codependent &c, and that's what I want - that's what sold the first book, and that's what I'm waiting for in the sequels.
In the end, I did like this. But I like it because Ellis is tackling themes and tropes I'm obsessed on an interpersonal level I adore. There's still so much that compels me and makes me want more: sign me up for Nikola-Paris-Cora-Ampersand-Nikola, which forms a phyle that violates no mores but the little issue of bestiality, and for the long-awaited alien sexytimes. Hell, I even like the physeterine worldbuilding; Ellis's aliens are convincingly, compellingly alien. But the series is stagnating, deviating, and I'm having to search harder for the bits I want to latch on to.
Title: Freeze Tag
Author: Caroline B. Cooney
Published: Scholastic, 1992
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 175
Total Page Count: 511,965
Text Number: 1848
Read Because: reviewed by
rachelmanija, borrowed from Open LibraryReview: As a teen, blissfully happy in first love, our protagonist is confronted by the consequences of a strange event from her childhood. Teenage love, blackmail, the world's weirdest superpower and a winter setting that fits it perfectly, and Cooney's remarkable, metaphor-laden, taut voice - the last of which elevates this far beyond ... what, its deserving? the YA thriller genre? maybe just my expectations. This is worth it for the childhood prologue alone, which is phenomenal; the teenage parts grow melodramatic, but I like that this finds so much tension in the lingering, haunting imprint of that one childhood evening. Of course an outsider wouldn't believe: our protagonist can barely believe - it's too strange, too unsettling, for her to view directly, and that strengthens the horror elements in a book that sometimes errs towards thriller territory. The thematic development has some YA heavy-handedness, but the uneasy ending is equally successful, especially compared to, again, my expectations of its particular trope.
Somehow, I never encountered Cooney as a kid, but she was ridiculously prolific, particularly in this genre. I'll have to look into more of her work.
