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girls of paper and fire by Natasha Ngan
rating: ★★
empowerment /ɛmˈpaʊəm(ə)nt/
noun
authority or power given to someone to do something. "individuals are given empowerment to create their own dwellings"
the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one's life and claiming one's rights. "political steps for the empowerment of women"
Book & review trigger warnings for: rape, homophobic themes, abuse, graphic depictions of violence, grooming, and pedophilia. this review contains spoilers.
From the moment Lei is kidnapped from her home, every last one of her actions gets thwarted.
The promise of an empowering heroine dies after her first failed attempts to scape the demon general. Absolutely everything she tries to do, when hopelessness doesn't take over her, fails. She can't find out information about her mother (and she's found out when she tries). She scapes the king once, and she's severely punished for it.
The second time he calls for her, she's unable to do anything, and he rapes her so harshly she passes out immediately after leaving his rooms. Every last one of the Paper Girls, all of them unwilling or unable to consent, must endure the king's sexual abuse, including the LGBT girls that headline this (horror) show. The only one who's "willing" in her relationship with the Bull King is Aoki - the recently-turned 16 year old girl that fancies herself in love with him - and the one he more thoroughly convinces of his so-called love.
I am not one who tends to shy away from harsh topics, or someone easily rattled, but Girls of Paper and Fire managed to greatly freak me out with the way it depicts them so normally and with such impunity these crimes... and then markets the book to other teenage girls, other LGBT teenage girls, as if they didn't already have to worry about such topics, as if those that were or are victims of this kind of violence could not be triggered by having these events so grossly and openly discussed in this context: one in which the victims have no choice but to endure, one that never promises them safety or scape, one that tells them to be honored that they are there, where in some cases they were sold to this position by their parents, whether that is through conspiracies to end the king's reign or to gain his favour.
Maybe me and everyone else who's rated this book four or five feminist stars have different interpretations of the book or what constitutes as empowerment... but I don't think this is it. I don't think this is a story appropriate to sell to teenaged victims of sexual violence, and I don't think it'd open any healthy conversations about it, as Ngan hopes in her author note. I think, although I really hope I'm wrong about it, that all it could do for these victims is to make them relieve those moments of hopelessness while offering absolutely no relief, no satisfying showdown between the abuser and its victim, since every attempt at taking him down fails.
I am perfectly aware that stories like this seldom have a happy ending in real life. However, one that is sold with the promise of hope and restitution should leave the reader feeling any sort of hope, at the very least... and I don't get any of it. Lei, Zelle, Wren, Blue, Chenna... every last woman in this book has the strength of mind and willpower to know that what's happening to them is wrong and to want to scape it, but absolutely none of them can and every last one of their efforts is thwarted, even those that at first look successful.
While this is the thing that bothered me the most - the fake promise of empowerment and healthy LGBT representation-, it is not my only problem with the book. The beginning of Lei and Wren's romance feels like inorganic insta-love, as if it was something the author wanted to happen and so she shoved them together. It's only by the end that I can feel like they actually connect.
Blue is too much of a typical Regina George type of character, which doesn't go at all with the tone of the book. Zelle's death is too much of a cheap trick - the killing of sex workers (in this case, a victim of people trafficking) in fiction is already a tired, old as dirt trope. What is it doing in this "empowering" novel?
There are pieces of the plot that are picked and then dropped as is convenient. What happened with the importance of Lei's gold eyes, so beautiful General Yu traveled so far to get to her? What about her quest to find her mother? What's the Sickness, other than a Chekhov's gun? What was the point of that one demon almost-raping Lei at the beginning, other than more gratuitious violence against women?
Nevermind that Every. Last. Time. Lei compared Wren to a cat I felt like I was in a SJM novel, and I am not precisely a fan of those. The writing style at times felt choppy, and the world building was lacking. Besides the vague mentions of imperialism and the info-dumps we got about the original Bull King, we don't learn how it is that so many different elements of different Asian cultures, some of them thousands of miles apart, have come to mingle together.
All in all, for a book so thoroughly hyped as inclusive of LGBT people and for an own-voices novel about Asian women, it was extremely lacking.
“I don't want an easy life. I want a meaningful one.”
to all the boys i’ve loved before by jenny han [goodreads review]
rating:★★★★
“When I write, I hold nothing back. I write like he'll never read it. Because he never will. Every secret thought, every careful observation, everything I've saved up inside me, I put it all in the letter. When I'm done, I seal it, I address it, and then I put it in my teal hatbox.”
It’s books like this one that are kindling in me a new-found love for contemporary romance. Light-hearted novels with sweet characters and, yes, a little bit of cheesy plot give me a sense of peace no other genre has managed to before.
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is all of this. Its main element is the pretend relationship between sweet, shy Lara Jean and popular jock Peter Kavinsky, which comes to fruition thanks to a mysterious person giving away all of Lara Jeans love letters – she’s written 5, one for every boy she’s ever fallen for.
“Do you know what it’s like to like someone so much you can’t stand it and know that they’ll never feel the same way?”
When one of those reaches Josh, her older sister’s ex-boyfriend (…come on, Lara Jean!), she panics and tells him that her feelings for him were a long time ago, that she’s now seeing Peter. Once confronted with this fact, Kavinsky plays along with it, since it’s really convenient for him too: it’s the best way to make his ex jealous.
“My letters are for when I don't want to be in love anymore. They're for good-bye. Because after I write in my letter, I'm not longer consumed by my all-consuming love...My letters set me free. Or at least they're supposed to.”
Need I say more?
Of course, the romance is not everything at play here. Lara Jean is going through a time of change in her life. After her mother’s sudden death when she was little, the only remaining Song Girls were the three sisters: Margot, Lara Jean and Kitty. Margot, the eldest, became their caretaker, but now that she’s half a world away, studying in college, Lara Jean finds herself in that role. Since the sisters were so close, their whole lives are shaken up, and the last thing our protagonist would’ve wanted was boy dram (and with those boys, in particular!).
“Margot would say she belongs to herself. Kitty would say she belongs to no one. And I guess I would say I belong to my sisters and my dad, but that won’t always be true. To belong to someone—I didn’t know it, but now that I think about, it seems like that’s all I’ve ever wanted. To really be somebody’s, and to have them be mine.”
All in all, if you’re looking for:
Fluff. Lots and lots of fluff.
High-School romance, with its corresponding drama (the only annoying part of the book- why couldn’t Lara Jean have more female friends?)
A really sweet, naïve protagonist with a good bad-boy-type love interest.
A quick read, to make a long weekend go faster.
Then this is the book for you.
“If love is like a possession, maybe my letters are like my exorcisms”
the orchid sister by Anne D. LeCLaire [goodreads review]
rating:★★
warning: the entirety of this review contains spoilers
Writing a book about pregnant brown women (pregnant brown teens!) being forced to abort their babies so the fetuses might be used to rejuvenate white women is never a good idea. It’s most certainly not a story a white woman should write.
Let’s go by parts. The book is told from multiple perspectives, with the main ones being Maddie’s and Kat’s. The supporting cast consists of multiple Mexican characters, and I swear I wanted to pull out my hair every time I started reading one of their chapters.
The “Spanglish” in which it’s narrated was incredibly irritating and distracting, it severely ruined the prose in my opinion, because it was pointless and added nothing to the characters - saying “calle” or saying “street” is the same, saying “padre” and saying “father” is the same, saying “cerveza” and saying “beer” is the same, et cetera. Adding the words doesn’t make the characters any more Latino than they already are - and neither does their exotification and their obsession with mysticism.
As a matter of fact, that only adds to the pile of already-there offensive stereotypes: cheating men, “temptress” women, “magical” old ladies, and characters with visions to the past in which the protagonists are being sacrificed to the gods. Nothing I, as a Latina woman, appreciate.
I don’t appreciate the main characters, either. They are meant to be women with careers, smart and sharp, yet they are so incredibly dumb it’s mind-blowing. An example: when Madison realizes Kat has gone missing and calls the police, she lies to them about having talked with Kat’s doctor. When she finds evidence that her sister might be having drug problems, she hides it and keeps it to herself. She ditches Jack in Mexico to go look into the mysterious spa-slash-clinic that the cab driver is too scared to see - and she goes without any way of communicating with the outside world.
And not just Maddie, oh, no, Kat is just as bad. Going back to get the treatment that’s aging her instead of making her look younger, blindly trusting the shady doctor with armed guards outside of his spa, ruining her first chance at escape by swallowing the pill she could’ve hidden in her mouth (as she did later, once the chance had been thrown away), not telling absolutely anyone where she was going… Do I need to go on? Most of the problems these people have would’ve been easily fixed if they had just talked to each other.
Frankly, the best thing about this book is the bond between the sisters. It was made believable, they obviously loved each other and I really appreciate that. I just wish the Mexico plot and characters had been better handled, because that way this would have been a completely different story.
Thank you to the publisher for giving me a free ARC in exchange for a honest review. All thoughts expressed here are my own.
If you look at it, it’s still red. If you touch it, it’s still wet. But if you listen to it, it speaks a single name in a pulsing chant.
Romanov.
Romanov.
Romanov.
Nadine Brandes’ magical take on the story of Anastasia Romanova and her family is, without a doubt, one of the best pieces of historical fiction I’ve read. While I am a little bit of a history nerd, I’m no Russia expert, but I don’t think I’m lying when I say that the accuracy with which the facts are told -yes, even with the magical aspects- is astounding. There was a lot of thought put into the writing of this book, a lot of research, and it seeps through the pages, along with its beautiful prose and sympathetic characters.
The story opens when the Romanov family is living in Tobolsk, after Nicholas II abdicates the throne. We are thrown into the mind of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova -or Nastya- as she goes through the struggles of her life post-abdication.
She goes from having the life of a princess (although one that's been taught to go about it in a much simpler way than we'd expect from royalty), to living in Tobolsk sorrounded by guards, to exile in Ekaterinburg, where she had to share a cramped space with her whole family, their remaining household, and several Bolsheviks that seem too cold to thaw.
This is a tale that relates the hardships of a family that's been stripped of everything they had, but that still find it in their hearts to hope, and to love: their country, their people, each other, and their captors, the perpetrators of the crimes against them. Even the most hardened of all souls will soften when they see how the kindness and humility of the Romanovs win over the affection of the Bolsheviks tasked to keep them in check.
Added to the well-known historical aspect of the story is, of course, the magic, but I’m not going to elaborate too much on that for fear of spoiling the story. All I’m saying is that I loved the transition the story took, from being a little subtle in the topic of spells, to the realm of everything fantastic, with elements that felt even paranormal.
Lastly, I just want you all to know that I’m writing this after reading the whole book in one sitting, on Jan. 8th, but I’m completely sure that this is going into my list of “2019 favorites”, and I can’t wait to get my hands on a physical copy.
Sometimes, comfort needed to sting more than the sorrow for it to break into the grief.
I was a bit hesitant to read yet another fairytale retelling, but as soon as I found out Ash was wlw, I jumped right on board! There can never have enough diverse retellings, in my opinion. Especially when they subvert the whole boy gets girl/girl gets boy trope.
In fact, if you have any recs for retellings that feature diverse MCs (particularly those written by ownvoices), let me know!
She liked it when she was angry, too. Angry was better than scared. Better than remembering she was a mortal among monsters. No one was offering her the option of training wheels anymore.
Turns out crowning your enemy as the High King of Elfhame against his will and manipulating him into binding himself to you has its consequences.
Who would’ve thought.
Jude Duarte, officially seneschal to Cardan Greenbriar but really his puppet master, has brought herself more problems than one would think a mere human teenage girl can manage. I am of the opinion that we should stop underestimating teenage girls, though, and Ms Holly Black seems to agree with me.
She is still one of my very favorite young adult heroines. I can’t help but admire her, her determination, her willpower, her need to fit in, her ambition. I love her in the same way I love all of my other morally grey female protagonists and I know she’d get along great with Adelina Amouteru, my overall favorite of the bunch. Jude keeps showing us how humanity is no lesser than any of your favorite magical creatures. She’s outsmarting and beating immortal beings left and right - obviously, she doesn’t always win, but the fact that she gets as far as she does is extremely admirable in itself. As admirable as everyone else is despicable... But... Ahem. On to more pressing topics
The Wicked King put a knife on my back, locked me inside my room with my arms and legs bound to my desk chair, and told me I would not step outside until I had finished reading. This is an author that knows how to keep her audience at the edge of their seats for the whole of the book. There is such an addictive quality to it; it manages to make you care for absolutely all of the characters. Not necessarily because they are good guys you want to support, but because you just want to know what they’ll do next. What their next play is. Who they’ll ally with. Whose back they’ll stab.
It’s a guessing game, and Holly Black has played it much better than she did with The Cruel Prince. As I said in my review of it, the only problem I found with the first installment of The Folk of the Air was its predictable plot-twist at the end. Now, however, there was only one big reveal I could anticipate, and considering how many there were overall? How many times I felt as if the book was punching me in the face with its twists and turns? It was amazing.
As amazing as its cast of characters, although whether I like them or not is another matter entirely. Cardan is still as petty and mean-spirited as always, only now he’s got a crown and a lot of inconvenient political problems he never wanted. He and Jude have to work together now, regardless of their wishes, and they also have to fight the extremely reluctant attraction they have for one another. If I’m being honest, I really, really hope they keep on fighting it, because as it stands, their relationship is far too toxic to be good for either of them. I look forward to seeing how it all crashes down on The Queen of Nothing, but as it stands, I don’t want to see them in any kind of permanent romantic entanglement. Beyond what’s business by the end of the book, I mean (by the way, that’s the one twist that I could see coming, as soon as the m-word was mentioned).
Madoc is still a bitch, but now I can add “petty” and “childish” to his very long list of, ah, admirable qualities (pfffft). Taryn should make the world a favor and just... Take some of that poison that makes you sleep for a hundred years and leave the grown-ups to do their thing. Heather, she should NOT come back to Vivi. Vivi should not get 100 feet near any humans ever again. Ms. Liliver, should keep being her awesome self. Everyone else, die. I hate you all and I love hating you, so please keep on being despicable. Seriously. I really can’t wait until Jude finally finds a way to become their overlord and makes them do her bidding in the most humiliating manner possible - in the exact same way they all have treated her.
“You tricked me,” Cardan says. “You played me for a fool, and now I am the King of Fools.”
having read tfo.ta, i have no idea how im going to manage to finish aco.war. the difference in worldbuilding and character development you can see despite having two similar settings is tremendous. the quality in the writing is so different. you have two main pairings that are somewhat alike and the execution of one versus the other is so different, so clear, it’s a wonder they even belong in the same genre or category. i only have 30% to go with aco.war but i. literally. can’t. i tried to read a little of it today after starting my review of t.wk and i was physically unable to continue.
i’m sorry i’m making these comparisons but c’mon. only one of those deserves to be a bestseller.
second star by J. M. Sullivan [goodreads review]
rating: ★★
warning: this review contains spoilers; warning for racist themes.
Wendy woke up feeling like she'd slept through a nightmare. When she saw she was in a makeshift bed with heavy tree roots dangling from the roof of a hole in the ground, she realized she hadn't dreamt it - she had survived it.
I feel so let down. What is there not to love about this premise? A sci-fi retelling of Peter Pan? Sounds amazing!
The story itself, though… not so much.
While the writing as a whole wasn’t bad, the text itself is juvenile - more for a middle-grade audience than young adults. The novel sticks very close to the source material, making it incredibly predictable about halfway through it. The pacing was too slow at first, and then resolved everything in the last 20% of the book. Annoying, but not unbearable.
The things that were unbearable, though… they are only two, but they are huge, and they completely break the story:
1) The insta-love: Peter and Wendy know each other for only a few days, yet by the time the crew goes back to earth, they declare themselves in love with each other. It’s obvious that they have not fallen for one another even through what the text itself shows: they find the other attractive, Wendy loves Peter’s red hair and his eyes, and she gapes at his arms, and he won’t shut up about her “galaxy eyes” (that’s not a color, by the way), but every aspect of it is superficial. Now, I would swallow it if they were younger, if they were 15 year olds, but Wendy is almost 20! I’m not even sure how old Peter’s supposed to be, but he’s well past the age of declaring himself in love with the first girl who visits his planet. Absolutely none of that made me believe that Wendy’s mature enough to lead a military mission of that caliber, nor that Peter is a hardened street kid, so frankly it would’ve been far better if the romance was saved for the latter books. The addition of Boyce as another love interest to set up a love triangle that will probably haunt the sequels just made matters worse.
2) The stjarnins: turning native americans into “wild” humanoid aliens was a bad idea when James Cameron did it, and it’s a bad idea when you’re retelling Peter Pan. The native people, while stripped of their humanity, still carried their stereotypes, unfortunately: they are savages, their faith is primal, they are not as intelligent as the british white folk, and they are (i kid you not!) like “early (read: primal, uncivilized, brutal) humanity”. Hooke himself says so: “The Stjarnin are a savage people, much like early humanity. Even their faith is primal. They worship of a deity passed down from stories and drawings.” (from Chapter 24, “The Crew is Carried Off”).
Oh, and they make human sacrifices. Well, they sactificed each other at first, but when they noticed they could kill others, they started to hunt British humans instead.
Absolutely none of this needed to be part of the story. They could’ve done anything, ANYTHING to evade this racist narrative. These aliens could’ve been humans that had arrived to Neverland before Hooke’s crew. There could have been aliens living with humans, and they could have been “civilized” (there was no reason, other than the racist notion that natives = savages, to make them like this). That part of the story could’ve been left out entirely, and Tiger Lily could have been a girl on either crew. She could’ve been a “lost girl”. She could’ve stayed with Hooke. She could’ve gone with Wendy and gotten kidnapped by the pirates later. There were a thousand different ways to avoid a racist narrative, and yet the story still went on this way. That was the biggest disappointment, and that’s the primary reason why I’m giving Second Star such a low rating and why I won’t be picking up on any further books in this series.
I like to believe that I am doing okay here in Faerie. I like to believe that even though I was drugged and nearly murdered at school yesterday, I am able to put that behind me today. I’m fine.
But if I can’t laugh, maybe I’m not so fine after all.
Wicked creatures, treacherous allies, and cunning humans all come together to form the best faerie-related series I’ve read.
Holly Black presents us a story about a human girl, Jude, who gets dragged along with her sisters into the cruel world of Faerie after her new stepfather murders her biological parents. With this change comes a new life, where she’s regarded as nothing, where her status as a mortal means that she’s less than the dirt under one’s shoes.
In spite of that, with the years Jude starts to regard this place as her home, and she’s grudgingly come to love Madoc, the only father she really remembers. She dreams of becoming a knight, a protector to some royal faerie who would, in exchange for her services, protect her from the worst of the malice of their species. Her dream starts coming apart, though, when the political climate starts changing and the need for new king becomes imperative.
Her ambitions are over the roof, and so is my sympathy and love for her. Jude Duarte will do her damnest to fit in, to gain even a sliver of power over the people who’ve made her life hell for the last ten years. She will fight tooth and nail, will resort to anything, to get the respect she deserves. No matter how badly they humiliate her, no matter how evil everyone around her is, she’ll do her best to become her worst. And that’s one of the most admirable qualities about her.
Resilient, sharp, and cunning, yet naive and inexperienced, this is one amazingly written protagonist who will stop at nothing to get what she deserves, and the biggest obstacle getting in the way of that... will be herself.
I’ve got to admit, however, that she’s the only character I can truly appreciate. I liked Vivi at first, but I read The Cruel Prince and The Wicked King back-to-back so now I don’t anymore (oops!). My gut-feeling, which told me that Taryn wasn’t to be liked, was right from page 1. Madoc is, dare I say, a bitch. No matter how hard Holly Black tries, I’m not going to fall for Cardan or excuse his behavior, even if I like his interactions with Jude; unhealthy and unbalanced as they are, they are compelling, but I still want my girl to get as far away as she can from that guy.
And yet, the only real complaint I’ve got about this book is the very evident twist at the end. I saw it coming from so far, I was surprised when it still happened. I thought “this is quite obvious, so it must be a red herring”. I was wrong. It happened. It was the same with Taryn’s mysterious betrothed: it was always obvious, altough perhaps this was on purpose, meant to show us more about Jude’s character than to further the plot. Either way, I feel like that could’ve been a tiny bit better executed.
All in all, this is an amazing read, with a good pace, nice world-building, and a flow so nice that you will go over a hundred pages and say “wow, I came so far in so little time?” I can’t wait for book two three.
I am not okay.
I am not okay.
I am not okay.
But when the Ghost arrives on my balcony, he can’t tell, and that’s the important thing.
king of scars by Leigh Bardugo
rating: ★★★ 1/2
warning: this review contains spoilers. the paragraphs containing them will be marked accordingly.
I’ll find a way. All his life, Nikolai had believed that. His will had been enough to shape not only his fate but his own identity.
I was on the fence about giving this book 3 or 4 stars... Because this is a 4-stars novel, but I know that Leigh Bardugo can do much better, so I thought I’d be more strict in this case. I wish I was giving it the 5 stars it should’ve had, though. However, I can't do that in good conscience, because in more than one way this book was a regression to the bad aspects of The Grisha Trilogy.
I’m not going to say that this book was terrible, because it wasn’t. Leigh Bardugo is an incredibly talented author. The prose was great. The book as a whole was great... If you consider it a stand-alone.
King of Scars, as we know, presents us three main perspectives: Nina’s, Zoya’s, and Nikolai’s, with a fourth in the second part of the book: that of a new character called Isaak. I will be dividing this review into sections for each character, highlighting my likes and dislikes for each of them.
Nina Zenik
She is the only one that’s had a POV before this book. Incidentally, she’s the one who’s characterization jumped out the most at me, especially in the first half of the book.
[spoilers]
When we first see her, she’s in Fjerda as a spy, working along with a familiar face, Adrik, and a new one, Leoni Hillis. She’s been on a mission for over two months, and for over two months she’s been dragging Matthias’ body along, refusing to bury him, hallucinating his voice in her head. That was my first indication that there was something “funny” going on: Nina had already let him go in Crooked Kingdom:
“In the next life then,” she whispered. “Go.” She watched his eyes close once more. “Farvell,” she said in Fjerdan. “May Djel watch over you until I can once more.” - Crooked Kingdom, Chapter 39.
And yet, despite having already accepted Matthias’ death, she drags his corpse along with her. I’m not going to lie: when she finally does bury him, I teared up. Her eulogy was beautiful. That doesn’t mean that it should’ve happened when it did. The importance he is given to Nina is far greater than that he had in Six of Crows. She loved him, but she loved Ravka too. She also loved her friends, and she missed her life at the Little Palace.
But for the first half of King of Scars, all she thinks about, all she cares about, is Matthias. I thought, “ok, maybe she’s rationalizing all the things that happened during her time at Ketterdam, her obsession with him is just a way to cope with PTSD”... but this all goes to hell when, despite her feelings, she willingly moves in with Brum at the end of her arc. She deserts Ravka and infiltrates Brum’s home instead of, oh, shooting his ugly face? When she’s got him defenseless, she chooses to keep him alive and not take him to Ravka for trial, despite the fact that she’s learned from him that they are planning something that relates to a Lantsov that’s not Nikolai, and that her country is at the brink of a war. She neglects to tell this to her allies as soon as she finds out and deserts the Second Army.
[end of spoilers]
All of this plus the fact that almost nothing that happens during her arc is connected to the other POVs makes for an overall confusing portion, the poorest of the novel, that’d have been so much better if Nina hadn’t had a perspective in Six of Crows. She was wildly OOC, in my opinion. But again, that doesn’t mean that everything about her parts were bad. I loved Hanne, one of the newly introduced characters, and I love her chemistry with Nina. I really hope they get together in the second book.
Nikolai Lantsov
I love him. His inner dialogue is one of the wittiest I’ve read, and we can finally see that he’s as sharp on the inside as he is on the outside, despite his insecurities (or maybe because of them). The first half of his story was the easiest, most interesting to read. Learning about his trauma, his struggles, his (literal) inner demon, and how he puts on a smart-ass brave face in spite of everything he has on his plate, plus seeing his wit first-hand, was great. One of my favorite parts of the book, along with Zoya’s, but that’s for later.
[vague spoilers]
The second part, though... I don’t know how much the Grisha Saints are based on Orthodox ones, but I’m not a fan of their storyline. While I’m not entirely familiar with Orthodox tradition, I am (or, well, I was brought up as) Catholic, and unless I’m severely mistaken, there are many similarities in the way Saints are depicted by both. However, the way that they were showed in King of Scars left a lot to be desired, in my honest opinion. Saints are not “edgy” and “inhuman”. Alina was a more accurate representation of the “older” or more primitive versions of Saints than Lizabeta and Grigori were in King of Scars. While the idea of powerful Grisha who helped people in a way that made them be seen as miracle-workers or holy people is alright, them being “beasts” or animals doesn’t follow any traditional lore that I am aware of.
The idea of them being “wickedly evil”, or of someone like the Darkling being considered for Sainthood is not feasible I think, if not for anything else than the facts that he wasn’t a man of faith, he didn’t perform any miracles, he wasn’t a martyr, and he wasn’t particularly heroic or loved by the people, so I don’t see how he could be proclaimed a Saint or get such a large cult following that is not, let’s say, “Satanist” or heretic (to be fair, neither do most of the characters who have at least a pair of working braincells, but I digress). Hell, one of the Darkling’s own nicknames was “the Black Heretic”, so why the U-turn?
I suppose, though, that we could be given an explanation for this last part in the following book, so I’m going to be open about it.
[end spoilers]
Zoya Nazyalensky
I. Love. This. Woman... So much. She’s amazing. She’s one of the strongest, as of now most fleshed-out characters Leigh Bardugo has written, on par with Inej Ghafa, my overall favorite. Her POV was the one I enjoyed the most, her inner dialogue as sharp as her tongue, her story heartbreaking, and her personality as unapologetic but lovable (for those of us not under her glare, at least) as ever. I loved reading about her thoughts, her opinions, her likes and dislikes (though mostly her dislikes), and she’s 100% the type of female character we need more: women who don’t take no shit, but who are still human. Those who are strong but have feelings other than “murder”, that are not defined by what other expect of them, but still bask in the benefits their reputations as heartless give them.
[slight spoilers]
The only problem I had with her POV, one that is extremely easy to fix, is related to her backstory. It’s established that her father was a Suli man, meaning that Zoya is now canonically a biracial woman. This is amazing! The most beautiful, powerful Grisha in all of Ravka (or, dare I say, the Grishaverse) is a woman of color. However, the way that this was established left something to be desired: there was absolutely no indication other than that of her mentioning it that she’s in any way Suli. Compared to Inej, whose culture is shown in absolutely every part of her character, the difference left me a little bit disappointed.
I’d be completely fine with it if she hadn’t known her father, or if she had been taken to the Little Palace when she was too little to remember anything about her family, but she lived 9 years with her parents, and she never makes absolutely any mention of any cultural aspect that she likes or misses about her heritage. This could be done in different ways: a throwaway comment about liking a particular type of Suli food, an art piece that reminds her of Suli art she liked/hated as a kid, a cultural tradition that she still participates in privately, a type of cloth, anything. None of that is there, though, so I was left with the impression that Zoya was whitewashed. Not in the “common” way, of for example a white person playing a black character, but in the characterization sense.
A little bit more on that: when you’re writing characters of color, you have to be careful of many things. To name a few: not falling into stereotypes, making sure colorism has no bearing in the story, not oversimplifying issues faced by people of color, especially if you’re not part of that group, and that you’re not putting a “poc” label on a character that is otherwise white. The last one is in my opinion what has happened with Zoya. This can be avoided (and resolved) easily by including nods towards her culture. An acknowledgment that she’s not a monoracial white Ravkan through anything other than just one comment about how her father was Suli would resolve this issue and give us the most badass WoC in the Grishaverse.
[end slight spoilers]
Isaak
[major spoilers]
As for Isaak, I don’t have a lot to say about him, because overall I think he didn’t need to have a PoV in the story. He wasn’t a character we knew from before, so we didn’t care about him. He dies at the end of the story, his only purpose is to look like Nikolai and have the shortest almost-romance ever. All of this could have been shown through the eyes of either Tolya or Tamar, who always followed him around, so they could’ve shown the same story with no problem. All in all, his part wasn’t bad, but I didn’t care about it, which could maybe be a problem on itself.
Lastly, my biggest problem, left for last: it doesn’t make any sense to me that Nikolai and Zoya would willingly align themselves with the Darkling. Zero. They were extremely and personally affected during the Civil War, the book does an amazing job of showing their trauma as a result of it, but by the end they willingly accept to work with him? No. I don’t want to believe that. It’s a disservice to the sacrifices the characters made in The Grisha Trilogy. Are you telling me Alina lost her power, her friends, faked her death and married Mal for that? For the Darkling to be back? This ending is a disservice to her sacrifice. I didn’t like that plot-twist at all, and I really look forward to the next book, to know how this is all going to play out, because I’m extremely unsure about how good this development will be, story-wise, for the duology.
[end spoilers]
However, and to wrap my longest review yet, I want to say that this isn’t a bad book. The writing is fantastic. The characters, whether I agree with their characterization or not, are fleshed-out and sympathetic. The pacing is great, I read the whole novel in less than two days. While the world was already established in previous books, we got a lot more of depth and information about Ravkan and, mostly, Fjerdan and Shu culture. Bardugo remains one of my favorite writers in the YA and Fantasy genres, but because she is capable of so much, I wanted to give her work a review that reflects what I think of her talent, and of how much more I think she can do as a writer.
"Yet now that the time had come to speak, Nikolai did not want to tell this story. He did not want it to be his story. He’d thought the war was in the past, but it refused to remain there.”
healer by Kay L. Moody [goodreads review]
rating: ★★★★
Ten hours after escapin certain death, Imara Kalu jumped back in harms way
And with this powerful statement, Kay L Moody opens the second book in the Truth Seer trilogy and jumps right into the action.
The first novel in this series had a problem, in my opinion: pacing. It went too slow at first, and then resolved everything too fast. This is not something that happens with Healer. We are submerged into the action from page one, and we are unable to catch our breath until the very end of the book -and that's only because the last page punches you in the stomach and takes it away.
Imara is back and she's more forgiving than ever. Maybe too forgiving (looking at you, Abe). Ever since she accepted she needed to stop judging people by the first impression she got through her hila, she's struggled to find the good in people, and later on the balance between their virtues and their flaws. She's also been struggling to find the time to fix the relationship with her sister and the rest of her family, but the demanding position she took when she started working for Abe has her completely devoid of personal time. Unless it is to spend it with her boyfriend, Mr. Commitment Issues.
Speaking of - I really liked Abe in the first book, but now I just got to side with Naki and tell Imara to please, dump him. The moment she stops being able to call him out on his lies, he starts lying to her. Thankfully, he seems to come to his senses and starts to treat her better by the end of the book. I hope this time it's for good. I won't forgive him if he still has this attitude in the next novel.
Unfortunately, while the characters are all really fresh, and I still love the fact that this story is set in Africa, with a Kenyan protagonist and such a diverse cast of characters to make it even better, I have a small complaint. I know, I know, I'm nitpicking, I'm sorry. But it's something I've noticed and it won't stop nagging me: there isn't enough description in this series. Things happen, and the characters react to them, and we are told how they react via physical cues, but it feels mechanical, it lacks a certain fluity.
It needs more description, more adjectives. Imara is tortured, and she screams in pain, but we don't feel it with her. She looks into Abe's eyes and sees the unspoken questions in them, but we don't know if it makes her heart flutter, if there's butterflies in her stomach, if the conflict between them makes her chest ache. We don't know how it feels like when she's being torn apart by having to choose between her boyfriend and her job, and her fractured relationship with her family.
What I am trying to say, and I can't believe these words are coming from me, is that this prose needs a little bit of purple.
Other than that, I'm loving this series. Moody has crafted an incredibly interesting and original world that leaves me wanting for more. This great combination between sci-fi and fantasy makes me think of a Star Wars story taking place on Earth, a story where we can all be jedis (and trust me, that's one of the strongest compliments I can think of).
This was it. Win or lose, whatever happened would happen now.
i’ve finished reading king of scars and guys... i am not going to be giving it five stars.
i am so, so mad at myself for that. i can’t believe it! but i also can’t pretend that so many things made sense (to me, at least)... ugh! there was just too much going on in that book
The truth hurts. But if you can accept it, it will make you stronger.
Truth Seer, the first book of the trilogy of the same name, opens a compelling, original, and overall underrated story about Imara Kalu, a young woman with the ability to see emotions and intents, who can tell when someone is lying or telling the truth.
I know, I know... we’ve all heard of one infamous Empath or another douchey Telepath. I swear, Imara is not like that. Her hila, the special ability that most humans have developed in the future, is not unique to her, despite being rare, and her interpersonal relationships actually suffer as a consequence of her talent.
Being able to tell truth from lie, while incredibly useful for her dream job, might turn out to be more of a curse than a gift for our protagonist. Because she so easily can tell people’s intentions, this has turned her into a little bit of a judgemental person. She mistruts everyone whose intentions she deems selfish, or those who are insincere no matter the reason. Her ability has become a crutch, and it’s about time that she learned to interact with people without relying on it.
It all starts at her sisters’ graduation party, when an extremist group that call themselves taggers kidnap Naki and some of the other attendants. Imara and some of her classmates, with whom she’s got a very rocky relationship, embark in an adventure that takes them to the Ancient Egyptian catacombs, full of treacherous illusions that only our main character, with her truth-seeing power, can get through.
An incredibly interesting premise, to say the least, with an even more interesting execution: the whole of the story takes place in Egypt, with a Kenyan main character, and a main cast that also includes Alaskan and North African characters, groups that we rarely see represented in media. Yes, a very diverse cast of characters in a non-western setting. Color me (pleasently) surprised! Oh, and by the way, in the future, it is Kenya the great power everyone wants to move to, since it was a little girl there that discovered that humans can develop their supernatural abilities -aka hilas- to make their lives better. I’ve got to note that all this was very well executed, especially coming from a white author.
The only thing I feel could’ve been better is the writing: while not bad, it was a little rusty in places, with a few issues of repetition and a lack of description that sometimes gave me the impression that Moody relied a little too much on “telling” instead of “showing”. Hopefully, this issue will be solved by later novels, because it is the only thing that’s keeping me from giving this book five stars.
All in all, a very good novel, with incredibly well-developed characters, an amazing plot, and an even more interesting setting.
You have a gift. Not just a hila, but a gift. Few people are truth seers, and even fewer are able to achieve greatness with it. You are one of the few. I know it.
Note: I was sent a free copy of this book in exchange for a honest review. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.
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