The Ones We're Meant to Find, by Joan He

It's your last day to nominate books for the Cybils! 

I'm going to try doing mini-reviews for the next little while, as I have a lot of books to read and won't possibly be able to keep up with reviewing them all, but I want to get down my feelings before I forget them.

The Ones We're Meant to Find is an impossible book to review, actually. It has so many mind-blowing plot twists that I can't tell you anything about what happens. It had me scratching my head and rereading passages and flipping back to check previous chapters several times to figure out what was going on, because you make certain assumptions and then it turns out they're all completely wrong. Except maybe the most important ones. 

It's also hard to review because I'm still not sure how I feel about it. It's compelling and frustrating in almost equal doses (but more compelling!). It's dense, as in, it packs a ton of world- and character- and plot-building into not very much space, so it feels fast-paced even though it doles out its mysteries agonizingly slowly! I loved the characters—they were brilliantly done and I cared desperately for all of them. The writing was beautiful. The world was fascinating and a very pointed critique of our own—but there were some elements that were hand-waved a bit too unbelievably for me. The plot was crazy clever and intriguing, but by the end I felt a little manipulated. Too much whiplash, too much milking the surprise reveals without giving time to digest the really interesting philosophy being explored. But on the other hand, manipulation is one of the themes, so having that experience as a reader is actually a plus for the book!

Do I recommend it? Highly! I really want everyone to read it so we can all have long interesting discussions about all He's really cool ideas! Do I love it? Almost! I think for me the twistiness of the plot ended up distancing me from the characters, so that the final dilemmas felt more mechanical than heart-wrenching to me. But I admire the book so much for how it weaves the personal and the political and forces the reader to ask really hard questions about our own humanity. Definitely worth reading.

Pride, by Ibi Zoboi

You saw that list of the books I've been reading. When I noticed Pride available as an e-book from my library, I downloaded it right away and opened it up, just to get a taste. Then I ignored everything else I was reading and devoured Pride from start to finish.

Folks, this book is fine.

What drew me in and kept me riveted was the writing. Zuri's voice is wonderful. She's a poet, and she loves her world, and her fierce love and pride in her family, her people, her place come through in every word. Bushwick is noisy and colourful and rough around the edges* and Zuri likes it like that. In her narration and in her poems she brings to life the people, the smells, the textures, the music—along with her worries, her dreams, her desire to make things better. When a rich black family moves in across the street with two good-looking sons, Zuri's sisters think their dreams are about to come true. Zuri is afraid they're going to ruin everything she loves about her home.

First question you might ask about this Pride and Prejudice retelling set in Brooklyn: if you've never read Pride and Prejudice, will you enjoy this book? Absolutely yes: in the same way that you can enjoy Clueless without having read Emma. Pride is its own story with vivid characters that pop off the page while playing out an ageless plot.

If you love Jane Austen and hold P&P close to your heart, will this adaptation will make you cringe? On the contrary: like Clueless, Pride reimagines the original in a way that's fun but also sends you back to Austen with new perspective. Social and economic divides are both easier and harder to breach today than in Austen's time; watching hypocrisy and willful ignorance get skewered and roasted is every bit as satisfying.

Pride is a quick, compressed adaptation rather than a slavish retelling, so nothing is forced. Zuri's relationship with Darius could have used more development, but in truth this story isn't so much about the romance as it is about Zuri's perspective broadening—and the reader gaining insight into her world and the forces that are changing it, for good or bad.

Just as Austen expressed her love for the intimate details of family and social life in her small corner of Regency England, so Zoboi makes us fall in love with one small neighbourhood in Brooklyn, threatened by poverty and gentrification, held together by love.

I wish I knew what Haitian and Dominican food tasted like, but I have had jerk chicken, which Zuri can probably get in Bushwick. So spicy it's painful, but layered with complex flavours, tender and juicy. We get it here with sweet potato fries or plantain chips. So good!

*I really wanted to give you some quotations instead of paraphrasing, but e-books are too hard to find things in! You'll just have to go find your own copy of the book to hear Zuri's voice.

Muse of Nightmares, by Laini Taylor

Laini Taylor has done it again. She has exploded my brain, and all the little brain bits turned into stars and flowers as they floated down around me. (That's the kind of thing Laini Taylor says all the time, but she says it more elegantly so it doesn't sound stupid!)

Muse of Nightmares is the conclusion to Strange the Dreamer, and you cannot possibly read it if you haven't read Strange the Dreamer, so go read Strange the Dreamer now (I told you to a year ago, so if you didn't listen to me then you should rectify that lapse immediately.)

I'm not going to spoil either book in this review. If you've read the first book, you don't even have to read this: I'm sure you had Muse of Nighmares on preorder! (That cliffhanger! It's up there with LOTR and Riddlemaster of Hed, right?) All you need me to tell you is that it doesn't disappoint. It's tense, heart wrenching, shocking and entirely satisfying.

Strange the Dreamer introduces a crazily fascinating world with all of Laini Taylor's brilliantly imaginative touches: a city that no one can remember; a floating castle shaped like an angel; blue-skinned gods with terrible powers; a librarian no-one notices who has a knack for languages and who defines the world in kinder ways than anyone else.

Muse of Nightmares takes that world and expands it fractally, going forward and backward in time to explain and warp our understanding of everyone and everything

Strange the Dreamer gave us a cast of loveable, hateable, pitiable, admirable, terrifying and deeply understandable characters. (Most of them are all those things at one time or another, or all at once, like real people.) Laini Taylor must be a telepath, or a super-psychologist or something, because she is so good at understanding what goes on inside people's heads. I think Lois McMaster Bujold is the only other writer I know who is as good at forging character motivations out of their history. Everything each character does is completely inevitable based on who they are and what they've been through, even when they completely surprise you (as her characters often do).

Muse of Nightmares takes all those characters and gives them arcs you never would have dreamed of, mostly based on throwing them into even worse situations than you have imagined. And she adds a few more characters, because we need to understand how the gods got there and why they did what they did. Strange the Dreamer was about Lazlo and Sarai discovering themselves, and each other. Muse of Nightmares follows them but also dips into several other points of view as it answers why, and how, and WTF, and questions whether redemption is possible. When unthinkable things have been done to save people from even more unthinkable things, can there be forgiveness?

Minya is one of the best characters I've ever read. So broken. So strong. Can she be defeated? Can she be saved?

My other favourite character arc is Thyon Nero's. One of the many things Laini Taylor is great at is making all of her characters have agency, even the minor ones. She creates these ridiculously insoluble crises for her protagonists that you can't see how they can possibly get out of it, but you forgot about that other character who's been busy doing something you thought was irrelevant but turns out to be crucial and changes everything. Awesome plotting.

Since I can't say anything more specific about the plot, I'll just give you some favourite quotations:

... it spidered a crack through the atmosphere of threat.

... an affinity, a rush—like the turn of a page and a story beginning.

And when her hearts resumed beating, she imagined she could feel a spill of light into the veins that carried her spirit.

Lazlo's chances came without warning, and when they did, he didn't dither, and he didn't stop to pack.

[A character], earthbound, felt every choice he'd made, every action he'd taken, as a weight he carried with him. He wondered: Was it weight he could shed or throw off, or was it forever a part of him, as much as his bones and his hearts? 

Also, Laini Taylor is the absolute best chapter namer of anyone, ever:

• From a Long Line of Indignant Nostrils
• Like Eating Cake in Dreams
• The Sea Stared Back
• "Dead" Was the Wrong Answer
• Like a Man Tearing Out His Own Beating Heart
• Dread Was a Pale-Haired Goddess
• Peace and Pastries
• It Would Be Stranger If There Weren't Dragons 

And two quotations that probably define Laini Taylor best:

Even under dire circumstances, there is a unique pleasure in introducing the bizarre and inconceivable to others.

New dreams sprout up when old ones come true, like seedlings in a forest: a new generation of wishes.

Keep sprouting dreams for us, Laini. We need you in our brains!

Every once in a while I taste a cheese that makes my eyes roll back in my head it's so sharp but with so much depth and richness to the flavour; it does different things to every part of the tongue and keeps revealing new sensations as the after taste lingers. I tasted a cheese like that in Spain. Then they gave me a second piece with some quince jam spread on top, and my tongue and my brain exploded in much the same way as when I read this book. I just didn't know it was possible to taste/feel that much all at once. I'm still processing. (The book and the cheese!)

 

 

 

Tess of the Road, by Rachel Hartman

I finally got around to reading Tess of the Road, and I don't know what took me so long! As usual, all the Bloggers I Trust were absolutely right: this is a fantastic, moving, meaningful book.

It's also a very hard book to talk about. It's not what you expect: it doesn't fit into any categories. It's a quest fantasy, sort of, but Tess has no idea what she's questing for. It's a coming-of-age story, but before Tess can come of age she has to overcome her childhood, which is not usually what fantasy coming-of-age is about. There is magic, but it looks more like religion—and oh, interesting and thought-provoking take on religion in general, which almost never happens, especially in fantasy. There are dragons, sort of, but not in the same way as in Seraphina. The one on the cover is metaphorical. There are lots of metaphors.


Okay, let's start with Tess. I loved Tess. She is so. messed. up. I wish I still had my copy of the book so I could find the amazing quotation about how she wouldn't just cut off her nose to spite her face, she'd ... (someone help me out here, it was such a great line!). Stubborn, angry, alcoholic, she's in so much pain and she is trying. so. hard. It just isn't working. Tess has been taught to hate herself, and she's doing an excellent job. She's difficult to read about, at first, because she's so frustrating. (Then she punches someone who really deserves it, and you're like, "yesssss! but noooooo, you shouldn't have done that!"

Tess finally runs away from her (mostly) quite horrible family. She has no idea where she's going; she's seriously contemplating suicide, but she isn't quite committed enough; she wakes up every morning and decides to "walk on" for one more day. Then she runs into her childhood friend, a quigutl named Pathka, and woah, quigutls have some interesting customs! And Pathka has some past trauma ko has to get over as well. (Ko is the non-gendered pronoun quigutls use.)(They have a very cool language, too.)

The plot seems random: Tess and Pathka are going down the road and meeting random strangers and doing random things. At one point Tess joins a road-building crew. (Pretty sure that's never happened in a quest fantasy before!) Pathka is looking for a mythical giant serpent, and Tess is like, sure, why not? Let's go look for something that might not exist. But then things start to come together in very satisfying ways. Tess is trying to forget her past, but every encounter she has brings up some memory, and gives her a new way to process it. She doesn't realize that she's on a quest for healing, but that's what starts to happen. It isn't easy. It's incredibly painful, actually. But she finds wisdom and grace and acceptance and she begins to reclaim herself. The fist-pumping that happens in this story is nothing to do with action and defeating enemies and all about interior journeys and defeating inner demons.

Don't give up on this book if you hate the beginning, with Tess's self-defeating flailing and the horrible women-hating religion and her awful, awful mother. All of these things are dealt with in surprising, nuanced and powerful ways. Motherhood, sisterhood, family, love—it's all turned inside out and held up to the light, and Tess comes away with some truth she can stand on, a woman she can be. (Oh, yeah, and she's disguised as a boy most of the time. There's some serious identity stuff going on!)

The writing is beautiful. I would quote endlessly if I still had my copy (I got it out of the library, but I'm going to buy the real book for myself because I like it that much, and that cover!) E.K. Johnson says Hartman can "kill your heart with her grammar" (which, by the way, is something Johnson is really good at, too!) and that's a great way to put it. There are some lovely, lovely, bits: wise or heartbreaking or numinous or just really funny. (If you love E.K. Johnson, you'll love Tess of the Road.)

Don't read it if you want flying dragons and, I don't know, anything typical of fantasy in general. Don't expect it to be a sequel to Seraphina and Shadow Scale: it's an entirely different book (Seraphina does show up in it, and it's great to see her, but it's not her story at all)(I want to re-read Seraphina now to see what it says about Tess: I don't remember her from it). Do read it if you like your fantasy to deal with real stuff in thoughtful, realistic ways, if you like characters who learn and grow and figure themselves out, if you like interesting, original fantasy worlds. (The more I read, the more I appreciate books that are interesting!)

I feel like I'm not conveying how much I liked Tess. I loved how different it was from expectations. Nothing was predictable; everything was fresh and surprising and fun. I'm making it sound painful but it's actually very funny most of the time. Tess is a mess but she's a compelling, hilarious narrator. Your heart breaks for her, but she could care less what you think! She makes you root for her all the way, and I loved where she ended up.

This is apparently book 1, and I can see where the sequel will go, but this had a satisfying ending. I will be happy to read more of Tess's adventures though!

Really dark chocolate with a flavour you wouldn't think would work with chocolate but somehow does. Maybe ginger? Or something less immediately identifiable. Cardamom, maybe, or black pepper.