#monstrous characters

[badbookopinions]

Iron Widow - Xiran Jay Zhao

A-: while the characters were a tad dramatic for my taste, everything about this book was so iconic I didn't even mind.

Zeitan is living a miserable existence on the frontier, threatened by monstrous aliens and mourning the sister murdered by the celebrity pilot of a Chrysalis, monster-fighting machines infamous for killing girls. So Zeitan leaves her family and her lover Yizhi to go kill him, and along the way ends up teaming up with a murderer, killing a ton of other people, and shaking Huaxia up forever.

First up, let’s take a moment to appreciate the sheer entertainment potential in the way every single character in this series dials everything up to eleven when they could be operating at a six. In the third chapter or so, Zeitan falls half-dead out of the cockpit after murdering a man and proclaims to the news droids grinning ear to ear, ‘Welcome to your worst nightmare!’ These characters are almost ridiculous in their drama - and while sometimes the cringe pulled me out of the story, it was incredibly entertaining.

Shimin is truly the craziest concept for a character I’ve ever met - convicted unrepentant killer of dozens, including his entire family, scowls nonstop. Also wears three-inch thick glasses, has multiple romance novels memorized, and turns out all that scowling is just squinting, because he can’t fucking see. I love him unconditionally.

The fight scenes are unmatched, taking place in the dual larger-than-life settings of building-tall monsters battling building-tall aliens and the users own mindscapes. Think Pacific Rim but five times larger, and only constrained by the way your own imagination adapts Zhao’s prose.

I think the non-fight scenes parts could have been improved, though, because all the social challenges Zeitan faces are overcome a little strangely - Zhao does a great job of making it clear just how stacked the odds are against her quest, but it means that when she amasses power without ever failing or having a major setback, those challenges feel a little exaggerated.

Plot: engaging and entertaining. I read the whole book in the span of a few hours, because I was having so much fun I couldn’t put it down. It goes along at a breakneck pace from Zeitan’s tiny frontier home to the explosive final battle, mysteries being uncovered and characters being revealed nonstop - it’s fantastic.

Characters: look at these maniacs go! Like, they’re all so okay with murder I’m a little concerned - especially at the end when Zeitan really gleefully goes off the deep end. Also, I haven’t appreciated Yizhi enough, who seems so chill through this whole book as a lovely grounding presence for Zeitan, until we get to the end and realize he’s just as down with murder as the rest of them, he’s just quieter about it.

Setting: I wish we’d seen more of this. Zhao realizes the central parts of the story really well - the mechas, the monsters, the patriarchy - but the bits of it lurking on the outside tend not to be filled in until it’s absolutely plot-relevant, which means that sometimes information feels like it comes out of nowhere.

Prose: some of the one-liners were gems. There’s this one passage where a side character is explaining a few atrocities Shimin committed and has to pause to scold Zeitan about looking so impressed - it made me laugh out loud.

Diversity report: central queer poly relationship, all-East Asian cast, a disabled main character.

[badbookopinions]

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - Inheritance Trilogy #1, N. K. Jemisin

B+ (yeah I’m doing letter grades now baby! I’ve decided I hate the 5-star system so I'm officially making my own way in the world)

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle. (from the Goodreads page)

I am a big fan of Jemisin’s work, so it was really cool to see how her style and skill has developed. This book isn’t nearly as strong as some of her other work I’ve read, but is still a good time. Anyone who’s read her other work and liked it will appreciate this.

Props for just... monstrous characters! Jemisin has this gift for terrible people, which is half not shying away from the terrible things they do and half making them more than the terrible things they do. This story is full of gods who don’t fall into mortal morality and it was horrifying and fun to read about them. Even our main, Yeine, is a little bit of a monster - she could so easily be the villain of someone else’s story, and she’s got this wonderful pragmatism about it.

Also props for my other favourite Jemisin trope, which is narrators that give something to the story. It’s told in first person, but as you keep reading you realize that Yeine is wonderfully aware of the audience as she reflects on her past... and then you realize it isn’t us she’s aware of, but some other audience. 

I think some parts were a bit more awkward - too much sex and not enough attention paid to the worldbuilding or minor characters - but it’s a strong start I’m excited to read more of!

Plot: good. I don’t like when books happen over too short a time for character and relationship development to feel authentic, and this one takes place over two weeks, which is a bit on the short side. I loved how much time Jemisin spent fleshing out the backstories of the gods and the story of Yeine’s mother giving up her power. I think they were more interesting than Yeine’s own story at times, although I think if Jemisin had focused more on them they would have crumpled.

Characters: they’re all so terrible, I love it. Even Sieh, the child-god I want to protect from the cruelties of the world, is also a fair amount monstrous. The relationships between the three main gods is terrible and fascinating and I can’t wait for it to be fleshed out in the next book because it is an A+ concept. I wish more time had been spent on some of the more minor characters: the two other captive gods, the two other heirs, because they end up quite involved in the climax and I could appreciate it fully because I hadn’t realized I was supposed to be paying attention to them ahead of time.

Setting: fantastic concepts, lacking in detail. From Sky, the floating city staffed by the royal family’s bastards, to the pantheon of gods, to Yiene’s own matriarchal home of Darr, to the rest of the hundred thousand kingdoms - there is so much to explore here. But Jemisin tends to gloss over it, not really telling us the details I found myself craving. You get the sense of a debut author having bitten off a bit more than they can chew, and in balancing between revealing boring details and revealing too little has decided to err on the side of caution and reveal too little.

Prose: you can see the beginnings of Jemisin’s style developing, and it’s great. While her quotes aren’t quite Fifth Season-level (have any of us ever forgotten the first time they read that ‘This is how the world ends’ passage?) there are some bangers here. “It is blasphemy to separate oneself from the earth and look down on it like a god. It is more than blasphemy; it is dangerous. We can never be gods, after all - but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.”

Diversity report: Yiene is brown or black, but not tied to any real-world culture. Some truly screwed-up gay relationships (if you’ve ever wanted to see a really toxic gay relationship but not toxic because of homophobic reasons, this is the place for that).

[kclose3]

“I just want to get her unconscious.” “Then you should have used ether and not claws…”

Pathfinder quotes from 2/20 :: Sometimes it's tough to tell your monstrous party members how to be delicate and non-lethal.