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juushikaTitle: Arcadia
Author: Iain Pears
Narrator: John Lee and Jayne Entwistle
Published: Random House Audio, 2016 (2015)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 615
Total Page Count: 254,920
Text Number: 822
Read Because: reviewed by Jen Campbell, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: When a girl slips into a strange new world, numerous storylines and timelines converge. The musing and worldbuilding about parallel dimensions, time travel, causality, and narrative structure makes for a clever, engaging premise, and it has the potential to function as commentary about portal fantasy and the fantasy genre. But the multiple prosaic plotlines and excess of indistinct, uninteresting supporting characters detract from the potentially numinous, evocative atmosphere and pad out the length. Even worse is the humor—and I'll admit I hate humor, but bias aside it does this no favors; it lambastes everything from British culture to bureaucracy to ideology to fantasy worldbuilding and it has limited respect for its characters, further detracting from the tone and the reader's emotional investment. I came to this on account of reviews from readers I trust; being able to tolerate its tone and approach may let that intriguing premise shine. But I couldn't, and it didn't; I found this tedious and vaguely unpleasant.
Title: Nimona
Author and Artist: Noelle Stevenson
Published: HarperTeen, 2015
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 270
Total Page Count: 255,190
Text Number: 823
Read Because: enjoyed the author on Critical Role + multiple recommendations, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A girl with shapeshifting abilities shows up to be the sidekick to a supervillian in his fight against the Institution. This wasn't as funny as I expected, which isn't a backhanded compliment but is, for me, why it worked: The humor is in the casual tone, the loose worldbuilding which integrates technology with generic fantasy tropes, and the sketchy art style. But the art holds up, it's consistent and lively with a phenomenal use of color, and the tone is never overbearing; it scales back to allow for character development and emotional depth, without letting things grow heavy. This isn't exceptionally deep, although I appreciate the ambiguity of the last few chapters. But it's a solid work, and more personally successful than I expected it could be.
Title: Barbary
Author: Vonda N. McIntyre
Published: Book View Café, 2011 (1986)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 185
Total Page Count: 255,375
Text Number: 824
Read Because: enjoyed the author on Critical Role + multiple recommendations, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: An young emigrant to an outer space colony is also trying to smuggle her cat aboard. This is intentionally a small book, short, but also focused on daily life and the lived experience on a space colony, the physics details of which are occasionally tedious, but it works well on the whole. The protagonist as an orphan finding a new family is compassionate and easy to project into; I probably would have loved it as a younger reader. A larger speculative concept floats in the background, evocative but decentralized. The real make-or-break is the cat, as I bounce off of most cats in fiction; it's hard to believe that he would be safe (or find oxygen) in all the situations he finds himself in, but he's a reasonably realistic cat and Barbary's caretaking is careful and not hugely dated. A decent book, small, kind, thoughtful; it doesn't hold a candle to the author's Dreamsnake, despite some tonal similarity, but it's an unfair comparison to a fantastic book.
Title: The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle Book 1)
Author: Patrick Rothfuss
Published: DAW, 2007
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 695
Total Page Count: 256,070
Text Number: 825
Read Because: enjoyed the author on Critical Role, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A chronicler comes to collect the account of a renowned and infamous figure from the man himself. A long, slow fantasy narrative has the potential to be deeply, if unhurriedly, immersive, which this aspires to. And it sometimes is—reminding me of Robin Hobb—but the daily account of a childhood and adolescence sidelines the larger fantasy elements. They're evocative, and the magic system is interesting, but the setting isn't particularly remarkable and I'm not in love with Kvothe. The interior past/exterior present perspectives of him contrast successfully, but it's hard to write the first-person trials and tribulations of a genius teenage boy without being somewhat smug and somemore trite; it's not as irritating as it could be, but neither did it capture me, and to be quite honest I'd prefer to focus on any of the female supporting characters. But it kept me engaged for 700 pages, which says something about the overall success of the pacing. I wanted to like this more than I did, and I'm not sure if I'll read the sequels, but it was fine.
(And thus we enter the interval of "yeah, it was okay" books, in which I fear I am still entrenched. Barbary was decent, though; just small. I wanted to love The Name of the Wind, I love Rothfuss so much on Critical Role. but this fell into the precise pitfalls—Gary Stu, sidelined and idealized female characters) that his role on CritRole avoids. Noelle Stevenson at least is a sincere delight, in DnD and on the page—Nimona was really quite good..)
Author: Iain Pears
Narrator: John Lee and Jayne Entwistle
Published: Random House Audio, 2016 (2015)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 615
Total Page Count: 254,920
Text Number: 822
Read Because: reviewed by Jen Campbell, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: When a girl slips into a strange new world, numerous storylines and timelines converge. The musing and worldbuilding about parallel dimensions, time travel, causality, and narrative structure makes for a clever, engaging premise, and it has the potential to function as commentary about portal fantasy and the fantasy genre. But the multiple prosaic plotlines and excess of indistinct, uninteresting supporting characters detract from the potentially numinous, evocative atmosphere and pad out the length. Even worse is the humor—and I'll admit I hate humor, but bias aside it does this no favors; it lambastes everything from British culture to bureaucracy to ideology to fantasy worldbuilding and it has limited respect for its characters, further detracting from the tone and the reader's emotional investment. I came to this on account of reviews from readers I trust; being able to tolerate its tone and approach may let that intriguing premise shine. But I couldn't, and it didn't; I found this tedious and vaguely unpleasant.
Title: Nimona
Author and Artist: Noelle Stevenson
Published: HarperTeen, 2015
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 270
Total Page Count: 255,190
Text Number: 823
Read Because: enjoyed the author on Critical Role + multiple recommendations, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A girl with shapeshifting abilities shows up to be the sidekick to a supervillian in his fight against the Institution. This wasn't as funny as I expected, which isn't a backhanded compliment but is, for me, why it worked: The humor is in the casual tone, the loose worldbuilding which integrates technology with generic fantasy tropes, and the sketchy art style. But the art holds up, it's consistent and lively with a phenomenal use of color, and the tone is never overbearing; it scales back to allow for character development and emotional depth, without letting things grow heavy. This isn't exceptionally deep, although I appreciate the ambiguity of the last few chapters. But it's a solid work, and more personally successful than I expected it could be.
Title: Barbary
Author: Vonda N. McIntyre
Published: Book View Café, 2011 (1986)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 185
Total Page Count: 255,375
Text Number: 824
Read Because: enjoyed the author on Critical Role + multiple recommendations, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: An young emigrant to an outer space colony is also trying to smuggle her cat aboard. This is intentionally a small book, short, but also focused on daily life and the lived experience on a space colony, the physics details of which are occasionally tedious, but it works well on the whole. The protagonist as an orphan finding a new family is compassionate and easy to project into; I probably would have loved it as a younger reader. A larger speculative concept floats in the background, evocative but decentralized. The real make-or-break is the cat, as I bounce off of most cats in fiction; it's hard to believe that he would be safe (or find oxygen) in all the situations he finds himself in, but he's a reasonably realistic cat and Barbary's caretaking is careful and not hugely dated. A decent book, small, kind, thoughtful; it doesn't hold a candle to the author's Dreamsnake, despite some tonal similarity, but it's an unfair comparison to a fantastic book.
Title: The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle Book 1)
Author: Patrick Rothfuss
Published: DAW, 2007
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 695
Total Page Count: 256,070
Text Number: 825
Read Because: enjoyed the author on Critical Role, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A chronicler comes to collect the account of a renowned and infamous figure from the man himself. A long, slow fantasy narrative has the potential to be deeply, if unhurriedly, immersive, which this aspires to. And it sometimes is—reminding me of Robin Hobb—but the daily account of a childhood and adolescence sidelines the larger fantasy elements. They're evocative, and the magic system is interesting, but the setting isn't particularly remarkable and I'm not in love with Kvothe. The interior past/exterior present perspectives of him contrast successfully, but it's hard to write the first-person trials and tribulations of a genius teenage boy without being somewhat smug and somemore trite; it's not as irritating as it could be, but neither did it capture me, and to be quite honest I'd prefer to focus on any of the female supporting characters. But it kept me engaged for 700 pages, which says something about the overall success of the pacing. I wanted to like this more than I did, and I'm not sure if I'll read the sequels, but it was fine.
(And thus we enter the interval of "yeah, it was okay" books, in which I fear I am still entrenched. Barbary was decent, though; just small. I wanted to love The Name of the Wind, I love Rothfuss so much on Critical Role. but this fell into the precise pitfalls—Gary Stu, sidelined and idealized female characters) that his role on CritRole avoids. Noelle Stevenson at least is a sincere delight, in DnD and on the page—Nimona was really quite good..)
no subject
Date: 2018-05-09 04:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-11 04:02 am (UTC)I definitely had a more positive immediate experience than I do memories; I think the okay ending came to overshadow the pretty good worldbuilding/atmosphere, and the romance came to overshadow the character growth, in my reflections. I didn't even dislike or take issue with the romance like some readers did--iirc correctly there was some criticism of the age/power gap? but I just found it unsurprising. I think it can be an interesting dynamic if the problems with it are better addressed; as is, I think it fell under my "vaguely disinterested in cishet romance" bias: it was lost on me.
But now that I'm thinking back on the book, the Wood is very good and the magic system is very good--there's so much potential for magic systems as a way of exploring/critiquing how intelligence and knowledge and ability functions in the real world--prescriptivism! disability! societal variance, different types of learning; it's fascinating but underexplored, but book learning vs intuitive/adaptive learning is a start of the conversation! Magic in Uprooted is dynamic and personal and convincing.
What really amazes me, though, is that I loved--loved, loved--the Temeraire books, but Uprooted was just okay. It's not even a case of better subject matter (I don't care about dragons; I do love creepy forests). Which I guess is my finishing note on it. It didn't really grab me, not like Novik's work elsewhere. But it was fine.
Sorry this is an auxiliary essay! I assume you won't mind, since you asked (bless you!) for my thoughts. What were yours? I'd love to know how my imperfect aged impression contrasts--especially as regards the magic system, if you have any thoughts on it. Am I remembering the book correctly?