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juushikaTitle: As Meat Loves Salt
Author: Maria McCann
Published: Fourth Estate, 2011 (2001)
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 540
Total Page Count: 330,470
Text Number: 1161
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The slow downfall of a young man whose worst qualities infect his most intimate relationships—it's an interesting choice of subject for the slow immersion fostered by a long, gently-paced novel. The reader's inclination to sympathize with the protagonist is played against his obvious awfulness, both overt and insidious, and it builds a stylistic tension which is more interesting than the plot. Unfortunately, it's not interesting enough to counterbalance the plot in its tedious final third, which is focused on colony-building and burdened by historical infodumping and a larger cast. The ending is a near-miss: it does promising things with a (predictable, but thematically-appropriate) ambiguity and the relationship between motive, behavior, consequences, and responsibility, but it feels too forced. A stronger ending could sell the whole thing; instead, I find myself comparing this to longer novels with equally mundane pacing which still read faster and feel more immersive—this is clever, and the middle third is great, but it feels constructed in a way that obstructs the immersion it requires.
Title: An Exchange of Hostages (Jurisdiction Book 1)
Author: Susan R. Matthews
Published: Avon Books, 1997
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 385
Total Page Count: 330,885
Text Number: 1163
Read Because: this has been on my TBR since before I started recording where I found recommendations, borrowed from OpenLibrary
Review: Brilliant surgeon turned equally brilliant—but conflicted—torturer who wins the devotion of his servants is pure id-fic, and the payoff is incredible. This balances the protagonist's (and reader's, by proxy) attraction to torture against the moral and social weight within a profoundly corrupt political system in a way that very much feels like fanfic: effectively psychological, even sociological, but with a thread of idealization and indulgence that makes it palatable. I appreciate that well-balanced tone; the rest of the writing is weaker, with minimal, first-book introductory plot and shallow antagonists, and a space opera setting that never lives up to its potential. So I like this more in theory and in my memory than in the actual process of reading, but the fact remains that it's hugely my jam and I'm glad I finally found a copy. I'll at least poke at the sequels to see if the overall plotting improves.
Title: In the Dream House: A Memoir
Author: Carmen Maria Machado
Published: Graywolf Press, 2019
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 255
Total Page Count: 331,140
Text Number: 1164
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A memoir of an abusive queer relationship, framed through metaphor, metatext, and trope/genre. The micro-chapters create a compelling "just one more" pacing and the second-person address forces reader immersion into an experience which is too often overlooked and dismissed—but sometimes the techniques feel like a gimmick, and certainly some of the experiments in tone are more successful than others. I share the inclination to frame personal experience through the tools and lenses of fiction, and I loved this. "Loved," like "enjoyed," comes to feel like the wrong or even a harmful takeaway, but I think this benefits from riding the edge of compelling and stylized, intimate and harrowing.
Author: Maria McCann
Published: Fourth Estate, 2011 (2001)
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 540
Total Page Count: 330,470
Text Number: 1161
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The slow downfall of a young man whose worst qualities infect his most intimate relationships—it's an interesting choice of subject for the slow immersion fostered by a long, gently-paced novel. The reader's inclination to sympathize with the protagonist is played against his obvious awfulness, both overt and insidious, and it builds a stylistic tension which is more interesting than the plot. Unfortunately, it's not interesting enough to counterbalance the plot in its tedious final third, which is focused on colony-building and burdened by historical infodumping and a larger cast. The ending is a near-miss: it does promising things with a (predictable, but thematically-appropriate) ambiguity and the relationship between motive, behavior, consequences, and responsibility, but it feels too forced. A stronger ending could sell the whole thing; instead, I find myself comparing this to longer novels with equally mundane pacing which still read faster and feel more immersive—this is clever, and the middle third is great, but it feels constructed in a way that obstructs the immersion it requires.
Title: An Exchange of Hostages (Jurisdiction Book 1)
Author: Susan R. Matthews
Published: Avon Books, 1997
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 385
Total Page Count: 330,885
Text Number: 1163
Read Because: this has been on my TBR since before I started recording where I found recommendations, borrowed from OpenLibrary
Review: Brilliant surgeon turned equally brilliant—but conflicted—torturer who wins the devotion of his servants is pure id-fic, and the payoff is incredible. This balances the protagonist's (and reader's, by proxy) attraction to torture against the moral and social weight within a profoundly corrupt political system in a way that very much feels like fanfic: effectively psychological, even sociological, but with a thread of idealization and indulgence that makes it palatable. I appreciate that well-balanced tone; the rest of the writing is weaker, with minimal, first-book introductory plot and shallow antagonists, and a space opera setting that never lives up to its potential. So I like this more in theory and in my memory than in the actual process of reading, but the fact remains that it's hugely my jam and I'm glad I finally found a copy. I'll at least poke at the sequels to see if the overall plotting improves.
Title: In the Dream House: A Memoir
Author: Carmen Maria Machado
Published: Graywolf Press, 2019
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 255
Total Page Count: 331,140
Text Number: 1164
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A memoir of an abusive queer relationship, framed through metaphor, metatext, and trope/genre. The micro-chapters create a compelling "just one more" pacing and the second-person address forces reader immersion into an experience which is too often overlooked and dismissed—but sometimes the techniques feel like a gimmick, and certainly some of the experiments in tone are more successful than others. I share the inclination to frame personal experience through the tools and lenses of fiction, and I loved this. "Loved," like "enjoyed," comes to feel like the wrong or even a harmful takeaway, but I think this benefits from riding the edge of compelling and stylized, intimate and harrowing.
