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juushikaTitle: Blue is the Warmest Color
Author and Illustrator: Julie Maroh
Translator: Ivanka Hahnenberger
Published: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013 (2010)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 160
Total Page Count: 259,365
Text Number: 839
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A high school girl falls in love with a female college student. This is a fairly traditional but not uncomplicated story about sexual awakening, coming out, queer community and identity, and fidelity. Love at first sight is an uninteresting trope, but the course of the relationship is significantly more complicated; the characters are flawed in sympathetic ways, and Clémentine's non-romantic relationships are well-rendered. I don't hate the tragic framing as much as I expected, it's not as maudlin as it could be, but I still don't find it as effective as the protagonist's character arc. The art is—well, it's not great, but it's emotive when it needs to be, particularly in the depiction of messy emotions, and I'm a sucker for selective coloring. (The editing of the English-translated ebook is unforgivably bad, with text overlapping itself and exceeding word bubbles.) And so I find myself ambivalent: the general thrust of this is relatively routine, but the specifics—although somewhat amateur, somewhat unrefined—have a messy authenticity which I appreciate. But I still don't like it as much as I wanted to.
Title: Smoketown
Author: Tenea D. Johnson
Published: Blind Eye Books, 2016 (2011)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 200
Total Page Count: 259,565
Text Number: 840
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: After being decimated by plague, the city of Leiodare stands isolated and safeguarded against the world near-future world. This is a book in which the setting is the central, and arguably most distinct, character; isolationist and traumatized; divided between advanced technology and gangs, cults and ritual. It's stylized and not especially convincing worldbuilding (I could do without the made-up nouns), but is also the book's highlight, an evocative, atmospheric study of society-building and social change. Plot and characters are by contrast vaguely forgettable. Of the trio of PoVs and overlapping plotlines, only Anna's interested me; there's big concepts at play in the plot, but they're underexplored and have predictable resolutions.
Smoketown reminds me of Brissett's Elysium, a more ambitious book with a similar focus on city as central character.* I wonder if ambition could have saved Smoketown, made it more focused and concrete; or if the problem is that Johnson's abilities can't yet support the ambition of Smoketown. Her floaty voice compliments Leiodare, but it makes for a distant, dead narrative, particularly in dialog and character interactions. I'll consider reading her other work to find out; I think her intentions and potential are promising.
* and Tidbeck's Amatka, another floaty city-as-character novel, this one with more satisfying worldbuilding and speculative concepts.
Title: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance Trilogy Book 1)
Author: N.K. Jemisin
Published: Orbit, 2010
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 420
Total Page Count: 259,985
Text Number: 841
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A woman is pulled from the relative obscurity of her distant kingdom into the central capital ruled by corruption and the power of enslaved gods. To my surprise, I like this fractionally more than the Broken Earth series, which I enjoyed; I find this atmosphere more appealing, the narrative trick here more successful than in The Fifth Season. I am never entirely on-board with the divine on this scale, with the localization of their influence and interactions, with the kinship between gods and humanity—even if intelligently interrogated by the text, as it is here. I want my gods larger and weirder. But within those limitations, this is an intriguing and evocative concept, well-complimented by Jeminsin's language; the theology is convincing, the gods large and strange; the ending suits that scale admirably well (although it would had been better left to stand alone, without the appendices). The pettier political plot is relatively well balanced against these aspects; many of the character types and dynamics are recycled into the Broken Earth books, but honestly I don't mind—like Jeminsin, I find them id-gratifying. I will continue with the series.
Author and Illustrator: Julie Maroh
Translator: Ivanka Hahnenberger
Published: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013 (2010)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 160
Total Page Count: 259,365
Text Number: 839
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A high school girl falls in love with a female college student. This is a fairly traditional but not uncomplicated story about sexual awakening, coming out, queer community and identity, and fidelity. Love at first sight is an uninteresting trope, but the course of the relationship is significantly more complicated; the characters are flawed in sympathetic ways, and Clémentine's non-romantic relationships are well-rendered. I don't hate the tragic framing as much as I expected, it's not as maudlin as it could be, but I still don't find it as effective as the protagonist's character arc. The art is—well, it's not great, but it's emotive when it needs to be, particularly in the depiction of messy emotions, and I'm a sucker for selective coloring. (The editing of the English-translated ebook is unforgivably bad, with text overlapping itself and exceeding word bubbles.) And so I find myself ambivalent: the general thrust of this is relatively routine, but the specifics—although somewhat amateur, somewhat unrefined—have a messy authenticity which I appreciate. But I still don't like it as much as I wanted to.
Title: Smoketown
Author: Tenea D. Johnson
Published: Blind Eye Books, 2016 (2011)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 200
Total Page Count: 259,565
Text Number: 840
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: After being decimated by plague, the city of Leiodare stands isolated and safeguarded against the world near-future world. This is a book in which the setting is the central, and arguably most distinct, character; isolationist and traumatized; divided between advanced technology and gangs, cults and ritual. It's stylized and not especially convincing worldbuilding (I could do without the made-up nouns), but is also the book's highlight, an evocative, atmospheric study of society-building and social change. Plot and characters are by contrast vaguely forgettable. Of the trio of PoVs and overlapping plotlines, only Anna's interested me; there's big concepts at play in the plot, but they're underexplored and have predictable resolutions.
Smoketown reminds me of Brissett's Elysium, a more ambitious book with a similar focus on city as central character.* I wonder if ambition could have saved Smoketown, made it more focused and concrete; or if the problem is that Johnson's abilities can't yet support the ambition of Smoketown. Her floaty voice compliments Leiodare, but it makes for a distant, dead narrative, particularly in dialog and character interactions. I'll consider reading her other work to find out; I think her intentions and potential are promising.
* and Tidbeck's Amatka, another floaty city-as-character novel, this one with more satisfying worldbuilding and speculative concepts.
Title: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance Trilogy Book 1)
Author: N.K. Jemisin
Published: Orbit, 2010
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 420
Total Page Count: 259,985
Text Number: 841
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A woman is pulled from the relative obscurity of her distant kingdom into the central capital ruled by corruption and the power of enslaved gods. To my surprise, I like this fractionally more than the Broken Earth series, which I enjoyed; I find this atmosphere more appealing, the narrative trick here more successful than in The Fifth Season. I am never entirely on-board with the divine on this scale, with the localization of their influence and interactions, with the kinship between gods and humanity—even if intelligently interrogated by the text, as it is here. I want my gods larger and weirder. But within those limitations, this is an intriguing and evocative concept, well-complimented by Jeminsin's language; the theology is convincing, the gods large and strange; the ending suits that scale admirably well (although it would had been better left to stand alone, without the appendices). The pettier political plot is relatively well balanced against these aspects; many of the character types and dynamics are recycled into the Broken Earth books, but honestly I don't mind—like Jeminsin, I find them id-gratifying. I will continue with the series.
