A rounded 4.5 stars.

I read Nguyen's The Sympathizer last fall and it was an instant surprise favorite; the setting, the tone and the unique perspective quickly drew me in. After a breathless one day read and a rousing discussion with my local library group, I immediately came home to put this book of short stories on my to-read list as well. And now it's here in my hot little hands!

The first chapter, Black-Eyed Women is about ghosts, real and metaphorical. It was an excellent way to open The Refugees, giving us the theme that permeated each successive story

... I would remember vividly [...] my feeling that while some people are haunted by the dead, others are haunted by the living.

There were so many lines I wanted to keep and savor and share, but they all work within the context of each story, rather than outside it. The experiences cannot be summarized by a single sentence, not even fictional ones.

His descriptive text is sparse, but Nguyen still manages to set me where ever he wants. I can feel the tropical heat of Vietnam seeping through the pages of his words.

read it, buy it, love it.

As anyone who follows me knows, I spent the majority of this book yelling about Mother, a supporting character who ended up sacrificing herself for the sake of her unit's quick escape.

But she fucking managed to drag herself away, drugged and minus half a leg and LIVED ANYWAY. I AM IN LOVE.

A big lady with a shaved head, her call sign is short for motherfucker. I want an entire HBO television series about her. Hell, I wanted this book to be about her, but I suppose Shane Schofield is a good second choice. He's got the Level Four Tragic Backstory all set up with the scarred eyeballs and history of torture that men in this genre seem to require.

I was skeptical when the description of this book told me that it would "literally leave [me] gasping," but hell if this wasn't a wild ride. There is, I think, a certain level of disbelief when it comes to any thrillers, but those with unbelievable military maneuvers are to be taken in with even less attention to physics and reality. If you can't do that, then Ice Station is not for you. If you can, welcome! Shit gets hot and heavy around forty pages in and rarely allows you a second to breathe, as promised.

There's SO much death and shooting and crossbows and ALSO KILLER WHALES. It's like Matthew Reilly reached into my brain; I love those sea monsters. One of the scientists getting excited about the pod's hunting capabilities is me, full stop.

The story itself, Marines assigned to secure possible extraterrestrial technology and the shadowy oversight committee devoted to infiltrating all forward military units to be sure of the US's advantage over, well, everyone, is not particularly new. The whodunit mysery in the station and amongst Shane's unit could have been held out for longer - it would have made for a more tense and satisfying confrontation. I think there was just too much the author wanted to tell in this book after it had happened to work out that way.

The exposition gets a little clunky at times, because Reilly did his research and wants us to know it. Still, it prompted my own googling marathon and now possess far more knowledge about the Antarctic Treaty than ever before. On a related note, the investigative reporter husband-and-wife duo from the Washington Post? I could not have cared less about them; they were clearly there only as a plot device to move us forward on the layman's discovery of the aforementioned shadowy organization

(and the surprise rescue by Andrew Trent at the very end.)

. Shane (or Mother!) could hardly have done it while floating on an iceberg in the Southern Ocean, after all.

Ice Station surpasses all requirements to be labeled a "high-octane thriller" and I look forward to grabbing the sequel soon for more improbable adventures.

This is the concept of Death as an office, like Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series, but hilarious and not rife with misogyny and pedophiles.

At the risk of sounding like a mall goth, I love Death.

I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.

I am one hundred percent going to read the rest of Death's line of books and then move onto the greater Discworld series. I can't believe it took me this long to start!

Scott snuck glances her way too, but where Mom's eyes were filled with concern and confusion, Scott looked at George as if his sibling made sense to him for the first time. George had never been gladder to have an older brother.

In addition to 2017's Book Riot challenge, I have a soft goal of working on my existing read around the world list. This is my choice for Haiti.

Each story left me wanting to know more; each was connected by the bones of one another, through families and history and blood. The first story was my favorite, if not the most arresting (that way lies with Between the Pool and the Gardenias, a dead baby and a delusional woman). Children of the Sea is a back and forth story between a young man and woman, in love and separated. He is fleeing across the ocean into exile from President Duvalier's personal paramilitary force (Tonton Macoute) while she is left behind with her family. They write to each other with no way to send the letters and the story that unfolds is beautiful as it is tragic.

Hers is the more overtly horrifying, expounding on the variety of ways the Macoute terrify the country ("they have this thing now that they do. if they come into a house and there is a son and a mother there, they hold a gun to their heads. they make the son sleep with his mother. if there is a daughter and father, they do the same thing.") His is dreamy, filled with the razor-sharp dangers of long, unprepared voyages at sea. ("Since there are no mirrors, we look at each other's faces to see how frail and sick we are starting to look.")

We hear of them later, in passing, in other stories. It is not a happy ending.

This was a gorgeous collection, filled with love and pain and tragedy and what it means, for Danticat at the very least, to be Haitian.

4.5 stars, y'all.

In their words, this book hits.

"Men claiming superiority over women because men make more money than they do is like claiming you're stronger than a lion that you tranquilized and put in a cage. Sure, you're in a better spot now- but how 'bout you unchain the beast and see what happens?" (p. 229)

Review to come.

Rounded up 3.5 stars.

KIRR-E-BAS, the "ti" sound in I-Kiribati is always an "s" sound. Gonna learn you today.

As part of my ongoing read around the world project, this title was not my first choice - a white man gallivanting amongst the natives on remote island nation? Sounds like a problematic disaster waiting to be read. Unfortunately, I can only read English and Kiribati itself hasn't produced much in the way of accessible literature for people as limited as I am. So, with Troost we shall persevere.

The book opens with a self-deprecating look into why he moved to Tarawa, Kiribati for two years, comparing himself to unnamed memoirs of go-getters who "feel alive when [they are] nearly dead." Troost had no real answer for his journey across the world; he was a person who had Aged into Adulting without the requisite understanding of What Comes Next. "Like many highly educated people, I didn't have much in the way of actual skills." It is a little more self-aware than I was expecting, given the title. His girlfriend Sylvia was the real impetus - she was offered a position on the atoll; Troost came along as little more than a house-husband with vague ambitions to write a book.

He acknowledges that he was entirely unprepared for atoll living; he was imagining a tropical paradise and what he got was more along the lines of a very hot, very humid, very isolated place with very few options in, well, anything. It's obvious that he was often bewildered by the I-Kiribati and their culture, but it was tempered by a fairly heavy dose of respect for the people - if not always their customs. See: shitting in the ocean downstream from where he is swimming.

Troost mostly focused on things that affected day-to-day living in the atoll, like dog cannibalism and the bubuti, which was the cultural system of trading favor for favor whenever asked. Never being able to say no to a favor sounds like a goddamn nightmare. Even without my dirty capitalist upbringing, being beholden to anyone is not my cup of tea. Even the I-Kiribati are wary of it, hating being promoted because it means they have more to give. I-Matang (people who are not I-Kiribati) are allowed to refuse bubuti, but they are the only ones:

"[Airan, a young Australian-educated employee of the Bank of Kiribati] was, however, miserable. He had just been promoted to assistant manager.

"This is very bad," he said.
"Why?" I asked. "That's excellent news."
"No. People will come to me with bubuti. They will bubuti me for money. They will bubuti me for jobs. It is very difficult."

This system is why many governmental Kiribati positions remain in I-Matang hands. "Sylvia's presence ensured that the organization would not crumble under the demands of bubuti system, which is exactly what occurred when the only other international nongovernmental organization to work in Kiribati decided to localize. Its project funds were soon gobbled up in a flurry of bubutis and the organization dissolved."

Troost also commented on a broader political sphere, speaking of the colonialist history of the Pacific and the current issues plaguing the islands due to the Western world's complacency: "There was, it seemed to me, considerable dissonance between the health care concerns of westerners and the realities of the Pacific. Diarrhea and acute respiratory infections, for instance, killed nearly 10 percent of children under the age of five. But glamorous people don't die of diarrhea. Elizabeth Taylor doesn't hold fundraisers for people with the runs."

After two years, Troost and his girlfriend left Tarawa and tried to adjust back to the Western world, with its too many options and faster pace. They had a baby, but when the opportunity to go back to the Pacific arose, they jumped on it and brought him along. "A day might be wonderful or terrible, but it was never, ever boring. [...] I am quite likely the world's laziest adrenaline-junkie, and so living in Tarawa worked well for me. I didn't have to do anything. Shit just happened on Tarawa."

Kamala is the new Ms. Marvel we need.

A solid 4.5 stars. Very smart, short comics, many of them about books or the elitist side of literature. I'll let them speak for themselves.