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juushikaTitle: Long Way Down
Author: Jason Reynolds
Narrator: Jason Reynolds
Published: Simon Schuster Audio, 2017
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 320
Total Page Count: 298,925
Text Number: 992
Read Because: reviewed by Possibly Literate, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: On his way to revenge his brother's murder, a young man encounters everyone he knows who has died to gun violence. This is a verse novel, and the format works fine but is nothing exceptional—there's power and momentum in the language, but gimmicky wordplay. It's the premise which is strong: punchy, brief, in no ways subtle, but the characters and relationships are indelibly human and the protagonist has a convincing adolescent voice—there's nuance to balance the stylization, and it does good by its complex social issues.
Title: In the Vanishers' Palace
Author: Aliette de Bodard
Published: JABberwocky Literary Agency, 2018
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 210
Total Page Count: 299,135
Text Number: 993
Read Because: reviewed by3rdragon at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
50books_poc, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A healer's daughter's life is forfeit to a dragon in exchange for a cure. This is a queer beauty and the beast retelling within a Vietnam-set post-apocalyptic dystopia of unearthly ruins and lingering diseases—atmospheric, evocative, more fun than its initial grimness lets on. I'm an easy sell for this romantic dynamic, but I still feel like I missed the protagonist's turning point to attraction and forever lagged behind the relationship's development, despite that the blend of attraction and fear is lovely. But this worked for me otherwise, and I enjoyed it more than de Bodard's novels: its styling is denser, its action more constrained, its emotions more accessible (perhaps too much so, given the thesis statements in the resolution), but with that same vein of diverse and ornate worldbuilding that makes her work attractive.
The use of Viêt gendered pronouns is fantastic! The six uses of "vertiginous," however, should have been caught by an editor.
Title: Five Ways to Forgiveness
Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
Published: Library of America, 2017
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 290
Total Page Count: 299,425
Text Number: 994
Read Because: reading the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: There's an ongoing thread in the Hainish novels (and Le Guin's work in general, as far as I can remember) of how to fix a world—of the various, individual problems within a society, and who sees those problems, and why, and who has the potential to solve them, and how. The uneasiness in this, particularly given the frequent outsider PoVs in the Hainish novels, is the threat of the white savior trope (among other pitfalls). Five Ways to Forgiveness is an uneven collection which errs towards confusing due scattered worldbuilding (the appendix clarifies a lot but, perhaps, shouldn't be necessary) and, although explained by monopolies and hegemonies, tends towards monolithic. It concerns two planets undergoing political revolutions which end a long system of slavery, and so is even more daring, and precarious, in its questions. It answers aren't always satisfying, or good, and sometimes they lean explicitly towards white savior. But they're multiple and critical, and as such robust; perhaps what they answer best is the Hainish cycle's own imperfect efforts.
A Woman's Liberation is both the strongest and most punishing to read.
Author: Jason Reynolds
Narrator: Jason Reynolds
Published: Simon Schuster Audio, 2017
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 320
Total Page Count: 298,925
Text Number: 992
Read Because: reviewed by Possibly Literate, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: On his way to revenge his brother's murder, a young man encounters everyone he knows who has died to gun violence. This is a verse novel, and the format works fine but is nothing exceptional—there's power and momentum in the language, but gimmicky wordplay. It's the premise which is strong: punchy, brief, in no ways subtle, but the characters and relationships are indelibly human and the protagonist has a convincing adolescent voice—there's nuance to balance the stylization, and it does good by its complex social issues.
Title: In the Vanishers' Palace
Author: Aliette de Bodard
Published: JABberwocky Literary Agency, 2018
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 210
Total Page Count: 299,135
Text Number: 993
Read Because: reviewed by
3rdragon at 50books_poc, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County LibraryReview: A healer's daughter's life is forfeit to a dragon in exchange for a cure. This is a queer beauty and the beast retelling within a Vietnam-set post-apocalyptic dystopia of unearthly ruins and lingering diseases—atmospheric, evocative, more fun than its initial grimness lets on. I'm an easy sell for this romantic dynamic, but I still feel like I missed the protagonist's turning point to attraction and forever lagged behind the relationship's development, despite that the blend of attraction and fear is lovely. But this worked for me otherwise, and I enjoyed it more than de Bodard's novels: its styling is denser, its action more constrained, its emotions more accessible (perhaps too much so, given the thesis statements in the resolution), but with that same vein of diverse and ornate worldbuilding that makes her work attractive.
The use of Viêt gendered pronouns is fantastic! The six uses of "vertiginous," however, should have been caught by an editor.
Title: Five Ways to Forgiveness
Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
Published: Library of America, 2017
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 290
Total Page Count: 299,425
Text Number: 994
Read Because: reading the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: There's an ongoing thread in the Hainish novels (and Le Guin's work in general, as far as I can remember) of how to fix a world—of the various, individual problems within a society, and who sees those problems, and why, and who has the potential to solve them, and how. The uneasiness in this, particularly given the frequent outsider PoVs in the Hainish novels, is the threat of the white savior trope (among other pitfalls). Five Ways to Forgiveness is an uneven collection which errs towards confusing due scattered worldbuilding (the appendix clarifies a lot but, perhaps, shouldn't be necessary) and, although explained by monopolies and hegemonies, tends towards monolithic. It concerns two planets undergoing political revolutions which end a long system of slavery, and so is even more daring, and precarious, in its questions. It answers aren't always satisfying, or good, and sometimes they lean explicitly towards white savior. But they're multiple and critical, and as such robust; perhaps what they answer best is the Hainish cycle's own imperfect efforts.
A Woman's Liberation is both the strongest and most punishing to read.
You can't change anything from outside it. Standing apart, looking down, taking the overview, you see the pattern. What's wrong, what's missing. You want to fix it. But you can't patch it. You have to be in it, weaving it. You have to be part of the weaving.
The gardens of Yaramera were utterly beautiful in their desolation. Desolate, forlorn, forsaken, all such romantic words befitted them, yet they were also rational and noble, full of peace. They had been built by the labor slaves. Their dignity and peace were founded on cruelty, misery, pain. Esdan was Hainish, from a very old people, people who had built and destroyed Yaramera a thousand times. His mind contained the beauty and the terrible grief of the place, assured that the existence of one cannot justify the other, the destruction of one cannot destroy the other. He was aware of both, only aware.
