aimiller's Reviews (689)

My usual gripes about criminality in this series aside (and in the acknowledgements she does go into talking a little bit about her sources in terms of criminal justice techniques, especially about The Mind of the Pathological Criminal, so I was right, thank you everyone) this maybe was my favorite one? Though I am uh Wary of Fantasy India's Caste Systems (and the Chekov's lowest caste) but I am not super qualified to comment there. 

All that said, I did love the character relationships; it feels like Tris's apprentice was so beautifully constructed to clash with her in the most perfect ways, and to watch her grow and appreciate her being Mean but also so deeply kind and determined to stick to her obligations. Keth was such a great foil, it was fun having some more disabled representation in the series, and the magic stuff was super cool to watch unfold. It made me want more with him, and I'm excited to see what happens in the next series! 

This was a really fun read; though not the most academic of studies maybe (though it doesn't claim to be!) Zipter does dig into some serious intracommunity work, identifying in part at least how racism impacts teams, and how idealogical or perceived idealogical divides within lesbian communities manifest in softball. The best chapter by far is the chapter about the aesthetics of lesbian softball--it made me want to run out and join a team again right now! If you want to read dykes waxing poetic about softball this is absolutely a book you should read. 

This might be my favorite Discworld book so far after Guards! Guards! and I think that might mean more given that I mostly love that first book for the character build up. This has so much--the Vetinari/Vimes stuff was. So much I had to lie down (when ur gay and you make ur bf solve the mystery of what is killing you even though you figured it out before him.......) and the whole golem plot around freedom was really interesting and powerful (though I would love to talk to a Jewish person about it, especially because there was this throwaway line about receipts that made me go "oh yikes.")  And then like the Nobby plot was of COURSE so good; Pratchett has hit a kind of stride in this third book of new characters and keeping old characters and it's good to watch them interact. 

Also all dwarfs are trans and I love to see it! 

Oh man this was one very intense! I think this was less mystery and more thriller, which is a cool kind of genre change up here. It also meant I personally was so much more tense and screaming at the book at certain points. But if you want Criminal Minds for kids, this is right up your alley I think. (The cop/carcerality stuff uh bugged me but ymmv, most kids books are not written for prison abolitionists.)

I received a copy of this book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, and I'd like to thank the publishers for the opportunity to read this book.

This was a good and interesting collection; in some ways the theme I think made at least some of the stories feel kind of similar in a way that made them blur together, and some of the recurring themes (we get it, "augmentation" is a metaphor and rarely about disabled people or reflecting how ableism works.) But I think it's still definitely an interesting read, and folks might appreciate seeing other people recognize fascism in fiction as we face it in our current moment. 

GOD this collection was just so, so wildly good. So many incredibly thoughtful pieces, so much thoughtful, careful work from folks on the inside and out. The pieces I keep returning to in thinking, that really shifted my thought, were Erica R. Meiner's piece on sex offenders, and Lori Girshick's piece on masculine women and transmascs in prison, both of which raised a huge number of questions for me and which I will keep returning to again and again.

That's not to say they were the only two good pieces in the book; every single essay was full of so much to think about, and experience to hold and be grounded in. The stories that folks on the inside had were of course incredibly brutal, and all pieces hammered home that in fact reform--like housing trans people according to their gender--does not necessarily decrease the violence that incarcerated trans people face, especially if that means that more money gets poured into prisons.

Definitely recommend this for anyone thinking about prison abolition, and for queer folks in general to think about what we owe our queer and trans siblings who are incarcerated.

This is clearly something I'm going to have to return to in order to better appreciate, I think. Reading it on its own without much knowledge about what was going on (I mean I've read The Bible, but the historical context stuff is not my specialty or really even my like knowledge base) means I got like basically the barebones of what was happening and not much beyond that. Which I recognize is my fault, not the text's, but definitely did impact how I was reading it. 

(Also my complaint about this edition [Barnes and Noble classics]: inconsistent bolding of the 5 line mark intervals meant sometimes I had no idea if there was an explanatory note or not and it was confusing and slowed me down!) 

So I will say this was not as horrible as I was kind of expecting, based on the reviews of folks I trust. I don't know that the form was exactly right for highlighting the most work; I've read reviews about Chu not committing to the bit and I would definitely agree with that; she seems to pull back from her arguments just as they're hitting a real peak, or getting near interesting.

I think what was most interesting for me was Chu interrogating Valarie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto frequent inclusion as a feminist text, and that frankly Chu's argumentation following the logics in Solanas's work reveal the claustrophobic world Solanas's work creates. Probably the other most interesting part for me was the section on pornography, but otherwise I was left kind of "meh" by the end. 

This was very cute and I think I would have been SO into it as a little kid. The Moral feels more coherent here than maybe in other iterations of it that Pratchett talks about, and frankly I love that Tiffany is allowed to be a kind of heartless, intellectual little girl. Also I love every single one of the Nac Mac Feegle. Will definitely be following up on the rest of these stories! 

There were many things about this book I liked--I think it handled the mentorship relationship way better than the last one, in that there was just so much more onscreen time between Briar and Evvy (and it was SO CUTE. Every part they were together I kept going "AWWW" and having to put the book down because I was overcome by how adorable they were.)

There was some stuff going on that I did not love--there was a weird amount of fatphobia which like, I get that here fatness is also a sign of wealth and not caring for the poor, but it's also like. Rough in its depiction. It's also much darker than any of the previous Circle books which is not in and of itself a bad thing, but may be worth knowing going into it. 

But apart from that, like I said, I really did enjoy this book, and it made me hope that we will see more of Evvy especially in the future!