juushika

My reviews have been out of order since I've been grouping series/authors into single posts, and most of those groups are kid's books, and I've been reading a ton of them in between other novels. But the novels are more indicative of how I'm spending my time and the quality of what I'm reading. I don't know if I'd call it a slump or burnout or a bad streak, but there definitely has been a line of mediocrity—enlivened by a book about which my review notes read "it's trash, but it's MY trash and I love it." White Wing has been on my TBR for approximately seven million years, but is very much out of print, so I'm glad for a birthday trip to Powell's to make the rare acquisition of print books that I intend to own. (A rarity on both points, since ebooks are easier on my eyes and physical possessions are evil actually.)


Title: The Prey of Gods
Author: Nicky Drayden
Published: Harper Voyager, 2017
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 380
Total Page Count: 328,090
Text Number: 1161
Read Because: reading the author, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: Animalistic demigods cause upheaval across South Africa. This is snarky ensemble kitchen-sink action/adventure pulp, not at all my style but so energetically written—a diverse, vibrant cast and refreshing setting; a wild escalation of scale and ever-longer list of speculative concepts—that it's nonetheless engaging. In a parallel universe, a version of this book exists which has been pared of the dropped subplots and has fewer but more robust speculative elements, and I hope it achieved that without losing its energy. Back in this universe, I'm not convinced I liked The Prey of Gods, but it's certainly distinctive and I admire its ambition.


Title: White Wing
Author: Gordon Kendall (Shariann Lewitt and Susan Shwartz)
Published: Tom Doherty Associates, 1985
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 320
Total Page Count: 328,410
Text Number: 1162
Read Because: mentioned in the comments of Five Books about Loving Everybody, used paperback purchased from Powell's (for my birthday!)
Review: A flight within the stoic, ostracized White Wing is challenged when the loss of one of their own coincides with an attempt at political sabotage. I came for this for the group marriage which constitutes the flight, and to my delight it's both textual (despite limitations of being published in 1985, read: no homo) and central to the narrative. The primary tension is the flight's need to hide the intimacy, vulnerability, joy, and even the fact of their marriage, and that setup is contrived—and the book also struggles on a technical level, with headhopping, overacting, and dense early scenes that all stem from an excess of "show, don't tell." But the payoff, although predictable, is hugely gratifying. I eat this stuff up: interpersonal issues hidden within a harsh space opera setting; martyrdom and longing and outsider status; intimacy as weakness, but that weakness as a hidden source of strength. Gordon Kendall is an overtly masculine pseudonym for Shariann Lewitt and Susan Shwartz, which I feel explains a lot: this is written directly from the id, but it's a different id than most sci-fi, and it's an id similar to my own.

(Very much a 3-3.5* book but I liked it, so.)


( The primary reason this gets the unusually intimate relationship tag )


Title: House of Purple Cedar
Author: Tim Tingle
Published: Cinco Puntos Press, 2014 (2013)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 260
Total Page Count: 329,060
Text Number: 1172
Read Because: mentioned on this list of Native American authors, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: In the late 1800s, a small town is disturbed by the destructive violence that targets their Choctaw community. That historical focus is specific and refreshing, but this is an ensemble/stories-within-stories narrative; the many inset tales of the townfolk paint the broader historical picture, but their rambling, humorous tone is tiring and they overwhelm an underlying family tale which more intimate and haunting. So this is fine—evocative sometimes, interesting sometimes—but it gets in its own way or, at least, in way of the parts that I found interesting. I bounced off this so hard that I regret not DNFing it.

Nothing explicit in this first review, but cutting just in case!

( Domination & Submission: The BDSM Relationship Handbook, Michael Makai )


Title: The Man-Wolf
Author: Erckmann-Chatrian
Published: 1876
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 90
Total Page Count: 324,130
Text Number: 1141
Read Because: fan of the trope, ebook free from Gutenberg
Review: I was slow to invest in this, despite the excessively evocative descriptions of the barren German forest, because it's so external: an observation of the werewolf as a dreamlike illness; distant, impersonal. But the outside view allows for the werewolf to be Othered, something less than human but more than animal, interacting with humans in a unique way:

( Spoilery quote. )

This is an early werewolf story, and I love that these early examples can feel fresh, exploring aspects that haven't become central to a trope with defined, repetitious elements. But however interesting, I still didn't enjoy this, and it holds no candle to Clemence Housman's The Were-Wolf, also early werewolf fiction, also engaging a relatively unexplored element of the trope, but distinctly more captivating.


Title: Crota
Author: Owl Goingback
Narrator: Heath Kizzier
Published: Books in Motion, 2004 (1996)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 95 of 320
Total Page Count: 324,225
Text Number: 1142
Read Because: reading Native authors, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: DNF at 30%—moreso because it's not for me than because it's outright bad: procedural supernatural horror isn't my vibe, even when distinctly removed from modern urban fantasy, and the writing is workmanlike (probably exacerbated by audio), burdened with headhopping and infodumps, not especially evocative despite the gore. Under that, it's probably fine as a horror pulp, but I'm the wrong reader.

Title: Rooftoppers
Author: Katherine Rundell
Narrator: Nicola Barber
Published: Simon Schuster Audio, 2013
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 290
Total Page Count: 321,575
Text Number: 1128
Read Because: reading the series, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A baby girl found in a cello case is adopted by a bookish man, despite the judgmental eye of the authorities. This is enthusiastically twee, the kind of twee which is distinctive and quirky and delightful, from the ramshackle home where books serve as dinner plates to the independence and exhilaration of the titular rooftoppers. It strikes a fair balance in the middle grade-problem of authority figures: the wish-fulfillment and creative liberties of an independent child protagonist, but a caretaker who isn't dangerous or useless—their relationship is idealized but lovely. It's the end which stumbles. It isn't abrupt so much as it sends one plot-beat sooner than I wanted—it never lives out its climax, never makes the mother an active presence—and while that relationship could easily be too bittersweet, or complicated, so saccharine for this story, its absence is a cop-out. Rooftoppers is a lovely read, but I'm spoiled for quirky middle grade. I want something richer, thornier—thorny in ways which are more unique (the sexism is too general) and which have a larger impact on the protagonist (the conflicts of the rooftoppers fail to do this); in short, I want that absent relationship to be made present and complex, a final test of the protagonist's character growth.


Title: The Heart of Thomas (Volumes 1-3)
Author: Moto Hagio
Translator: Matt Thorn
Published: Fantagraphics, 2013 (1974-1975)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 515
Total Page Count: 322,090
Text Number: 1129
Read Because: mentioned in the New York Public Library's A Beginner's Guide to LGBTQ+ Manga (but I've been vaguely aware of it for ages), hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: At a German boys' boarding school, a new student arrives who looks uncannily like a student who committed suicide for unrequited love. This is early shojo and helped establish the shonen-ai genre, and it's fascinating as a historical artifact but it also holds up—where dated, it's dated in a way that reaffirms its strengths and significance; it doesn't feel worn thin by the stories it inspired. The art is dreamy, beautiful, and clean, with relatively light use of screentone and an abundance of the allegorical panels, romantic imagery, and sparkling eyes that distinguish the genre. (The handsome Fantagraphics hardback is also a pleasure.) And where it's easy (and productive!) to criticize everything problematic about shonen-ai, its appropriation/metaphorical use of queer men and its gayngst, this is everything that makes shonen-ai successful: the metaphorical tone set against melodrama and trauma, and the evocative, interior, chaste view of non-normative desire, is everything that makes the genre attractive to and supportive of its young female audience, providing them a heightened and safe avenue to explore their own anxieties. (The introduction, quoted below, has a relevant passage about the manga's origin.) I'm glad I finally read this! It exceeded expectations.

Hagio begin to think about a version of her story that would be acceptable to a shojo manga editor. She tried to rework it using female characters, to overcome the most obvious hurdle: the story featured only boys, yet the readers were all girls.

But it didn't work with a female cast. Creating as a woman, for female readers, she found herself wanting to make every action more realistic and plausible. As she put it in her 2005 Comics Journal interview, "it came out sort of giggly." it was important that the characters be Other in order for Hagio to explore the themes, some quite abstract, that she wanted to explore.

Title: The Auctioneer
Author: Joan Samson
Published: Valancourt Books, 2018 (1975)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 265
Total Page Count: 322,355
Text Number: 1130
Read Because: reviewed by rex, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The sleepy traditional lives of a farming community are drawn into a nightmare by the arrival of an auctioneer with big plans. Although set in New England, the focus on class and social change has the air of a southern gothic; a sort of southern horror with no interest in the fantastic; perhaps a southern suspense novel. The build is grinding, excruciating, awesome; at the 40% mark I was already wondering how things could get worse, but they did. It's a horror rooted in disenfranchisement, in being trapped (sometimes by oneself); I sympathize too strongly with this trope, and it means this is never enjoyable, even within the bounds of the genre: there's no pleasurable tension in experiencing suffering at a heightened remove. The end is weaker, with too traditional a climax (the rising tension of the climax mirrors the rising tension of the conflict, but the amount of action doesn't suit the book's tone) and a moral stinger with which I disagree.* Nonetheless this is a strong work, and I can see why it's survived as a cult classic—the criticism of social and economic control certainly remains relevant. But I found it profoundly unenjoyable, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in a piece of media, but sure does make that media difficult to recommend.

* ( spoiler )

or, Book Reviews: What a Lot of Feelings Edition. Part of learning to write better/easier reviews as been to make them ever shorter—I used to write repetitious mini-essays; one paragraph is much better. But I don't think it's beneficial to pare complicated or contradictory feelings down to an arbitrary one paragraph, nonetheleast because the time spent making line-edits could also be ... spent reading.... And I would rather argue through a book than make a definitive but unsubstantiated final judgement. Still, three long reviews in a row is a feat! And deceptive, because I read Tess of the Road in May, but was for a while too intimidated by my feelings to write any review at all.


Title: Tess of the Road
Author: Rachel Hartman
Narrator: Katharine McEwan
Published: Penguin Random House Audio, 2018
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 545
Total Page Count: 319,675
Text Number: 1119
Read Because: recommended by chthonic_cassandra, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: After years performing penance for her fall from grace, Tess reaches her breaking point and runs away from home. This is a book about journey, self-discovery, and trauma recovery, and I kept waiting for it to make a decline into preachy or hamfisted (especially as I read it just after Foz Meadow's Manifold World series, which is thematically similar and constantly caught out by its tone). But it never does. It's not a flawless book: the end is neat, too many supporting characters undergo positive development (everyone is too nice), and the thesis statements are aggressively made clear. But it's nuanced, organic, dynamic, contradicting, and so much greater than those flaws. There's a balance between the grounded, concrete, gradual work of life and of recovery and the sweeping emotional appeal of epiphanies, ineffabilities, and faith, and this balance—the stunning realizations; the practical work of actualizing them—particularly combined with the vibrant world and voice, builds a narrative which refuses sanctimony and simplification while still being ridiculously affecting. TL;DR: I cried a lot but did not cringe, and that's not easy for this sort of story to achieve.

I thought Seraphina was fine when I read it, but don't remember much of it now. I'm wasn't compelled to read the sequel, and rarely read YA at all these days. So I wouldn't have come to Tess of the Road if I hadn't been told that it stands alone and is a book of a different type, but it is. Being familiar with the sibling works is helpful but not necessary, and this is more complex and tonally modulated than I find in most YA.

( A quote. )


Title: Mrs. Dalloway
Author: Virginia Woolf
Published: 1925
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 190
Total Page Count: 319,865
Text Number: 1120
Read Because: personal enjoyment
Review: I worried for the first two thirds that I'd end up writing a tiresome "if a reader bounces off of a classic, is it because the Esteemed Novel is actually bad (and the Esteemed Reader knows better than canon), or because reading taste is arbitrary, or because the work was too difficult for the Un-Esteemed Reader, or because canon is a construct that indicates historical importance but not quality or pleasure?" review.

But this is a slow burn of a book. The stream of consciousness narrative skips between only loosely connected thoughts and characters—some threads are more appealing than others, and I kept wanting to return to the PTSD narrative; there's so many threads that I found it difficult to track, especially the character names. But the climax is greater than the sum of these parts. The act of internalizing, paralleling, and appropriating another person's suffering is subtle, profound, and deceptively large—and because so much of the ending exists in contrasts, in the reader's view of the metanarrative (as opposed to Clarissa's blinkered view of her story), the disparate plots become inextricable counterbalances. It's technically successful but not slave to technique: the ending—"She had once thrown a shilling into the Serpentine, never anything more. But he had flung it away."—that exploration of how we internalize another's experience, fail to understand it, still respect it, find in it a universal but specific truth—that ending is bigger than a narrative device. The answer to the question of canon is generally "yes, all of the above," and I had some corresponding troubles while reading; but it was more than worthwhile.


Title: Dicey's Song (Tillerman Cycle Book 2)
Author: Cynthia Voigt
Published: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2012 (1982)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 270
Total Page Count: 320,135
Text Number: 1121
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The Tillerman children struggle to settle into their new home. The first book in this series (Homecoming) was, like most books about children surviving on their own, insular and quietly escapist; their reintegration into normal life doesn't have that indulgent tone—but both books hinge on Dicey's ability to know, love, and benevolently manipulate her family members, and that competency and problem-solving is satisfying. There are some clunky conflicts in the middle third between Dicey and authority figures, but the protracted conflict of overcoming trauma to establish bonds of trust is more nuanced and engaging.

Then the book takes a turn in the final third when Dicey's mother dies. I found this ridiculously affecting, and that's partially because of the counterbalance of mundane moments, but honestly it's mostly because I recently lost a parent. And it smack of Newberry-style tragedy: more dramatic to write her out, and narratively easier than writing her in and figuring out how the family would come to terms with her mother's presence. (There's a particularly egregious pair of scenes where Dicey wonders, "Why? How? How could someone die of just being crazy, the kind of sad, faraway craziness that Momma had?" and where James tells her, "It's better this way, Dicey ... I read about it, at the library. Almost nobody recovers, when they're as far gone as Momma was." which illustrated how unsubstantiated and dramatized and borderline offensive-as-hell is this character death.) The ending worked for me as much as didn't, but still drags down my final impression of an otherwise compelling, quiet novel with a cogent central theme.

"Which Animorphs review to keep outside a cut?" is a question usually answered by "which was my favorite" but there are so many great books at the end of the series! 49 is just so good tho.


( The Deception (Animorphs Book 46) )


Small side-note: Ax has been using thought-speak while in human morph since The Proposal (Book 35), and here even human Animorphs can use thought-speak even when in human morph (just not when unmorphed). This is absolutely a contradiction of previous worldbuilding that I'm too lazy to look up, but it does align with the gradual power creep occurring in in these final books.

Further thoughts on thought-speak: The Other (Book 40) establishes that Andalites with a sufficiently close bond (subtextually: lovers; textually: shorm, "best friends") can thought-speak over larger distances. "Unless we are on different planets, we can hear each other's thought-speak." This is absolutely a plot convenience, but when do Cassie/Jake or Rachel/Tobias get it? Or is it endemic to Andalites, rather than though-speak? Thusfar the rules governing thought-speak-via-morph seem to be the same as govern Andalite communicative abilities.


( The Resistance (Animorphs Book 47) )


( The Ellimist Chronicles (Animorphs Chronicles Book 4 / Animorphs Book 47.5) )


( The Return (Animorphs Book 48) )


Title: The Diversion (Animorphs Book 49)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2001
Rating: 4 of 5 (my notes read: 4.9999 of 5)
Page Count: 165
Total Page Count: 306,055
Text Number: 1029
Read Because: reading the series
Review: This is inches from perfect, so it pains me that it mishandles the disability issue. Let disabled characters remain disabled! Cognitive impairments are still disabilities, but the general thrust here of the pious cripple who, when given the opportunity, would rather die in morph than return to a disabled body, is ... well, it's awful. Not the first or last look at disability in the series; it has good intentions, does some things right, but also feels in desperate need of a sensitivity reader.

The beginning is also a slow burn of boy-bird angst, despite some great Rachel/Tobias scenes.

But from the 25% mark onwards, this is captivating. (I read the bulk of this in the awkward position I assumed to read "just a few pages"—which morphed into the entire book.) It continues from The Revelation (Book 45), with further concrete, significant changes. Parents who have had minor bit parts before become significantly more real as they become part of the plot, again throwing into relief the bizarre, imbalanced, unfair position of the Animorph kids. Jake made me tear up, but his predicament is more frustrating than sentimental—it's a sympathetic rage, not a shallow tear-jerker. And I consistently love Tobias books despite that his angst, for all its complicated origins, is heavy-handed and familiar; this is somewhat more of the same, but rendered in precise, human detail (as he grows jealous while watching Loren pet her guide dog) that it feels fresh, and events here lead to significant character growth—Tobias is motivated and personally invested in a way we haven't seen before.

The emotional core is solid, an incredible amount happens, and even the huge action sequences are tempered by competence porn and justified by the ongoing escalation of scale as the war breaks out into the open. I love this—I just wish I could love it unreservedly.



( The Ultimate (Animorphs Book 50) )

"The Yeerks don't infest people like your mom was before she could morph," I said honestly. "The Yeerks don't want a blind Controller. They don't want a disabled Controller. Deaf people, people in wheelchairs, people with serious illnesses."

"She's right," Rachel said slowly. "I've never seen a Controller in a wheelchair. And I bet any human-Controller who gets cancer or loses a limb is killed. No joke."

Nonlethal heroes is a perpetually flawed trope for numerous & overlapping reasons, namely "that's not how head trauma works" and "the dividing line between good/bad as no kill/yes kill is unproductively simplistic" & this series has been playing against that inconsistently. The trope exists partially to make narratives audience-friendly, and this is MG/YA. So on the one hand, we're supposed to float along on the premise that that is how head trauma works; and on the other hand (the one the Animorphs cut off every third human-Controller), Visser One/Edriss 562 picks up on the fact that the Animorphs weren't killing humans, ergo these are real events with real consequences. It's fantasy violence when it needs to be and a Cassie ethical meltdown when it needs to be, and it doesn't stand up to close analysis, but the fridge horror realization that all the disabled Controllers are probably now dead Controllers is still huge. It aligns with the shifting scale and morality of the ending, but its retroactive impact is just ... massive.

And, to some degree, unpardonable, or at least on par with looking the other way re: Rachel. To what degree are the Animorphs responsible for the other people's bad behavior when its prompted by their actions? When they let an injured enemy get eaten by Taxxons? When they let the Yeerks or Andalites or Rachel do the dirty work in a fight? The evolving issue of disability is gradual but treated with a sense of the inevitable; that they think to recruit disabled Animorphs indicates that they've been increasingly aware that the Yeerks abhor disability—indicates that they've become aware of the fate of the Controllers they leave disabled. But they've still taken a moral superiority in their "non-lethal" methods.

Book #1000! This is an entirely-arbitrary number resulting from "number of books reviews that I managed to write up, for new-to-me or unreviewed books and/or series, posted since I started posting reviews online in college." It doesn't reflect what I've actually read in that time. It's still a neat round number!

When I was a (pre?-)teen I used to write book reviews on index cards, and then stopped all through high school, until I was 20. My old reviews are atrocious & some of them haunt me. Mostly I've made them shorter (despite that the #1000 batch has some longer reviews in it), but I also like to think they're ... yanno, better. I'm glad I write them.

And I appreciate that Cherryh is book 1000, because I love her work a lot and it's pretty indicative of my reading preferences.


Title: Cloud's Rider (Finisterre Book 2)
Author: C.J. Cherryh
Published: Aspect, 1996
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 375
Total Page Count: 300,545
Text Number: 1000
Read Because: fan of the author, hardback from my personal library (purchased used, unsure from where)
Review: The threat of another rogue sends Danny and the Goss kids up the mountain to Evergreen, on the edges of known land. Where the first book was interesting worldbuilding and engaging tropes cascading into a too-neat ending, this is almost the reverse: tedious, mundane social tensions building to a worldbuilding-heavy climax that still relies somewhat on the coincidence that burdened the first book, but which pays off character arcs and the unsettling, unknown setting. I read this for the bond animal trope, and I love Cherryh's id-heavy take on it even more here than in the first book, if only for the presence (and diversity) of new bonds.

But I find myself hung up on the issue of Brionne. ( Spoilers. )

( Two quotes, really great quotes about psychic communication and psychic bonds and bond animals. )


Title: The Raven Tower
Author: Ann Leckie
Published: Orbit, 2019
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 425
Total Page Count: 300,970
Text Number: 1001
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The Raven Tower
The Lease's Heir returns home to find his sacrificial duties usurped by his uncle—a summary which does this book no favors, because its true narrative is in its PoV, an alternating first- and second-person that obscures speaker and protagonist and antagonist. Unfortunately, its secrets are over-explained by the 70% mark, as characters recap the situation to one another ad infinitum—which belies a final development that retroactively makes the rest of the book more successful.

It's difficult to describe without spoilers! (I went in with zero foreknowledge, and am glad of it.)

I always want my fantasy gods to be stranger, larger, less human than they are on the page—and the rules that govern godhood here have strong internal logic but do make the gods feel limited. This is at odds with the awe and fear experienced by the human characters, and I envy them that and wish some were translated to the reader. This could have been a more ambitious experiment—stranger, bigger, less comprehensible; or just dense enough that the recaps didn't grow repetitive. But within the scope it has, as an experiment in narrative voice (how literal and deceptive PoV is; how the reader adapts their expectations to the speaker's) this is clever and sticks the landing. I wanted it to blow me away, but I'll settle for finding it solidly enjoyable.


Title: Alone (Tout Suel)
Author: Christophe Chabouté
Translator: Ivanka Hahnenberger
Published: Gallery 13, 2017 (2008)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 385
Total Page Count: 301,355
Text Number: 1002
Read Because: reading books in translation, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A man lives isolated on a lighthouse at sea. This is about imagination and language and loneliness, and these themes are fine but never developed with particular depth. The dense black and white art and sparse dialog is an aesthetic that doesn't work for me. Its starkness reads a like a Photoshop filter even when it's technically good art, and there's no contrast—no beauty to evoke the themes of imagination; too much repetition within the panels for such a sparse narrative.

(Four of the five speaking cast members are male, and the sole woman is seen explicitly and almost exclusively through the male gaze. Here's what an isolated man misses out on: companionship, diversity, and also boobs. No thanks.)

Title: 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 by 3rdragon at 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.

( Two quotes. )

( The Discovery (Animorphs Book 20) )


( The Threat (Animorphs Book 21) )


( The Solution (Animorphs Book 22) )


( The Hork-Bajir Chronicles (Animorphs Chronicles Book 2 / Animorphs Book 22.5) )


( The Pretender (Animorphs Book 23) )


( The Suspicion (Animorphs Book 24) )


( The Extreme (Animorphs Book 25) )


Some notes:

• Yeah, I did it, I gave another Animorphs book (The Pretender, Book 23) 5 stars, making this both two 5-star Animorphs books and three 5-star books in February. All of them have been id-books, like: objectively there may be flaws, and normally an objective flaw will color a book even if I really enjoy it, but there's a horizon where enjoyment outstrips objectivity and I just love the thing. Tobias angst always has the potential to sail over that horizon; I can see why he was so memorable & formative to adolescent readers—like, you know, me.



• The Extreme is the first ghostwritten book, and from now on almost everything is ghostwritten, excepting only The Attack (Book 26), The Separation (Book 32), and The Answer and The Beginning (Books 53 and 54, the last in the series). I'm sure there will be some issues with this, and I've already noticed some weird editing problems I'll discuss in the next batch, but The Extreme (Book 25) read fine to me. If anything, The Pretender (Book 23) felt out of place for being more frank re: marginalization, and it's not ghostwritten!



• The takeaway of the above being: 1) episodic format forgives a lot, 2) even single author(s) [given that Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant co-authored the Animorphs books] can vary over a long series with an episodic format, and 3) the Applegate oversight must provide some quality control, even if it's still a compromise.



• I have so many shipping feels in this goddamn series, and I normally don't get fannish about books. Is this because of the nostalgia? because the episodic style reads almost like a more shippable medium like television? because the MG/YA cusp lends well to both of the above? because of all the Weird Alien Sex things and star-crossed romances and "my boyfriend, the hawk" and "Prince Jake" and "that time I let a Yeerk into my brain"?



• My favorite dynamics are Rachel/Tobias, Aximili/Jake, Jake/Cassie, Cassie/Aftran 942, Tobias/Ax, and all the various interspecies monsterfuckers of my formative adolescence. There's so much weirdness and tension in all the relationships in this series, especially complicated by the fact ( NSFW-adjacent rambling )



• I say "the various interspecies monsterfuckers of my formative adolescence" in jest but uhhhh this is another "revisiting a thing from my childhood only to discover, oh, That Explains A Lot."



• I didn't take a break between batches 15-19 and 20-25 because 20-22 ended up being one cohesive arc. And then I didn't take a break after 25 because I was having a rough day & wanted to read Animorphs. I set these arbitrary break points primarily to prevent burnout, so I don't care about ignoring them if I'm not burned out. And I'm not. All I want to do read these books. It's such a successful reread project & I really needed something this absorbing right now.



• (That said, when I do manage to read something else, especially if it has wildly different worldbuilding, there's this sense of freshness, almost a shock. Animorphs is never routine—it has so many wild setpieces; it refuses to be routine—but it has in a way become a default for my expectations.

Title: The Invasion (Animorphs Book 1)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 1996
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 185
Total Page Count: 284,975
Text Number: 923
Read Because: reading the series
Review: This is a more robust beginning than I expected, establishing the series's premise and major worldbuilding, also the character dynamics, and it has a mini-conflict and climactic action scene. The writing is workman-like and telepathy makes for convenient infodumping, but these aren't bad things: they make it possible to cram a lot into a short book. And I'm surprised by how well I remembered it, given that I haven't touched this series in 20 years. It's a phenomenal combination of elements—the tension between body horror and wish-fulfillment; the distinct characters made emotionally accessible by morphing into animals (the seductiveness of an animal's mind is great; the scenes where characters pet other-characters-as-animals is even better).

I imagine my response to the sequels will frequently be "same! but with various additions/exceptions" and so I won't review them in this much detail. But this was a great start. I can see why I loved it as a kid, and I'm excited to read more now.


( The Visitor (Animorphs Book 2) )


( The Encounter (Animorphs Book 3) )


( The Message (Animorphs Book 4) )


( The Predator (Animorphs Book 5) )


On account of how there are 54 main + 10 side books in this series, and because they're short and I'm reading them in bursts, I'll post these reviews in groups of ~5 at a time. Some overarching thoughts on reading the series so far:

( Read more... )

The bulk of rereading Cherryh's Rider at the Gate was full of surreal self-doubt, like: why didn't I love this book the first time? why wasn't it the best of the best, top-tier bond animal trope, favorite Cherryh & favorite book for life? These questions got answers by the end:

[Mild spoilers for CJ Cherryh's Rider at the Gate and Forty Thousand in Gehenna, as well as an extensive conversation about the bond animal trope < that's a TV Tropes link if you'd like a refresher.]

( What doesn't work! What really, really does! An enthusiastic essay about the subtext of bond animals! )