booksthatburn's Reviews (1.46k)

It begins with many descriptions of backstory, almost all of which involve events of sexual and misogynistic violence. They're all from various myths I'm familiar with, but it was too much at once for me.

Lynesse braves her mother’s wrath to beg help from the sorcerer in his tower to fight demons invading the land. Nyr awakens after 200 years asleep to discover that his one big adventure is now history, and he must decide whether to help once more, or to retreat into his anthropologist’s detachment.

The worldbuilding blew me away. There’s a well-described communication gap between the main characters. It’s beautifully executed, and is such a wonderful way to portray artificially-assisted translation in real time. This means that for everything that’s happening, the two main characters have unique vocabulary for describing the scene and different understandings of what’s relevant. It generates depth and meaning in the narrative through something that sci-fi often handwaves away. 

The narration is asymmetric, Nyr narrates in first person but Lynesse narrates in third person. This could mean anything from slightly favoring Nyr’s version of events to indicating that whatever Lynesse is speaking doesn’t translate into first person the way Nyr’s thoughts do. Nyr deals with technologically-assisted disassociation, meant to help him cope with stress in the moment and then exacting a heavy toll later. Narratively, this works to show the level of technological entanglement Nyr has on a moment-to-moment basis, distancing himself from the locals even while he’s helping them. 

This is excellent, a story which uses the genre entanglement of sci-fi and fantasy to its utmost, creating something that couldn’t happen with either alone.

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book. 

Jian is the Hero of Prophecy, the central figure of an entire religion. But the prophecy was wrong, a new master says he's not ready to fight, and it seems like everyone wants him dead.

I savored this, I genuinely didn't want it to be over because it does so many things so well. Jian starts out as a kind of annoying kid and then gradually transforms into a less annoying young person who has finally had to make hard decisions and live with the consequences. Taishi is a war artist who teaches Jian because his former teachers were mucking it up and she couldn't stand for it. She's curmudgeonly and extremely competent in that way that fits her character, and her dynamic with Jian is what he needs without being what he wants. 

The worldbuilding is rich and detailed, with an immersive style where things are only explained as the characters have reason to think of that specific detail, and even more is conveyed through their interactions. The various factions are introduced gradually and it was pretty easy to keep track of everyone because they have distinct and memorable backgrounds and goals which are shown when they first appear. I generally have a lot of trouble keeping track of character names but I did much better this time because of how they were handled. 

The explanation for how the prophecy could go wrong is nuanced and fits the world so well, it's really well done. The plot has slower times of travel or hiding, punctuated by violence when the various factions run into each other. They have different things they want which all center on a couple of people, and some of those goals are fundamentally incompatible. The pacing is good, the calm times are usually filled with smaller bits of character growth (something Jian sorely needs). 

This is fantastic, a must-read for lovers of fantasy, revolution, and assassins. I'm looking forward to the sequel!

DAMSEL is a fable of a prince, a dragon, a princess, and her Sorrow. It is languid, methodical, and unsubtle in its metaphors in a way that wraps all the way around to making it difficult to discuss without spoiling the plot. 

This is an extended, decently layered metaphor for a bunch of things related to sexism, misogyny, and ideas of cis women in relation to cis men. Given the particulars of the Ama's characterization, it feels like she's someone who isn't a cis woman but is being forced to behave as though she is. That is literally what's happening, in one sense, but I can't tell whether the book is engaging with ideas of queerness or if this very long metaphor for a woman's role in relation to men is missing ideas of queerness entirely. In one very important sense, Ama is not a woman, is not attracted to men (or at least is not attracted to Emory), and is being made to behave as if she is a woman who likes men. She must fulfill her role in order to support Emory in his role, where that someone does what she is told to do is essential, but the very fact of her being the one to do it is completely irrelevant. Her station matters but her personhood does not, as far as everyone around her is concerned.

In order to save her wildcat's life from her king's wrath, Ama must tame her, removing those qualities which make Sorrorow (the wildcat) so fierce and vibrant. The more Ama learns what is and will be required of her, the more she tries to find a way out, some other option which will let her be happy. 

I like the audiobook narrator, this was a good performance which helped the story flow easily. My favorite part is Ama's project towards the end of the story.

There are some pretty explicit discussions of sex but they use antiquated terms for everything, in keeping with the vaguely medieval setting. I was able to guess the ending reveal ahead of time. Part of that is the way it's coy but not subtle. At the end my reaction is kind of meh. I liked it, but its bluntness meant I wasn't waiting to find out happened. Instead I was waiting for it to get where I already knew it was going. That can be fun, but I thought it would have more to it in the end. 

Tyler is sent to "camp" to make him stop being gay, but when night falls actual murder starts happening, courtesy of a stranger with a grudge and an axe. Tyler and his fellow campers must try to stay alive as the bodies pile up and darkness descends.

I like this a lot, it has a good mix of suspense and gore. Some of the characters are very unlikeable on purpose, since signing on to torture teenagers isn't an endearing trait. The way the point-of-view jumps around was handled well, it didn't generally give away whether a character was going to make it out of a particular scene. The cast is large enough to give the feeling of a rundown camp, but not everyone's perspective is directly shown, which helped me keep track of the characters.

Because of the setting (conversion therapy camp), almost every character is queer, since (true to life) these kinds of camps are often staffed by "ex-gays" who previously went through the program and are using continued involvement with the camp in order to try and maintain the illusion that the "therapy" worked. That means almost every character who gets murdered by the killer is gay, but since there are so many queer characters that they could murder a pile of them and still have several left over, the story still manages to have more queer characters survive to the end than some books have at their start. The worldbuilding uses a mix of memories and current events to convey the awful stuff that's happened. It also makes the excellent decision to have the main (murderous) action kick off when Tyler has barely arrived at the camp, thus showing just enough of the camp staff's nefarious  actions to give context without overwhelming the reader with the actual torture that is "conversion therapy".

PRIDE retells Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick. Ibi Zoboi makes this story fresh and new, placing old worries and new love in a modern context so seamlessly that you don't have to be familiar with the original to be pulled into Zuri's world. Her love for her family shines through, and her rapport with Darius Darcy has a wonderful mix of tension and romance. Elizabeth Acevedo's performance as the audiobook narrator is so perfect, bringing the story to life and making me believe that she is Zuri. 

Book one was fine when I read it a few years ago, but book two leans hard into the bits of the narrative style that I found annoying. If you liked ONCE AND FUTURE, know that SWORD IN THE STARS is that but more so, with extra Merlin, and has time travel. The other bit I didn't like was how Merlin was so "wrong" about the past, it feels like either intentionally misleading the reader in book one, or trying to fix a mistake in book two. It came off as a bit patronizing to me, though the overall aim of the correction was good.

Too many characters, times, and locations for me to track.

HUNTERS OF THE DUSK returns to Darren six years into the war with the Vampaneze, when he's sent out to hunt for the Vampaneze Lord. The problem is they don't know who that is yet, and their chances to end things once and for all are dwindling with every botched encounter.
After a while at the mountain, most of which was spent at war between books, it's time for another journey saga. One thing that stands out is the storyline with Vancha, there's a lot of intense stuff with self harm and suicidal thoughts, framed as a one-sided fight with the sun that seems in keeping with Vampire society as a whole. It allows for a very intense discussion about this topic while couching it in a layer of absurdity, and the whole thing works very well.

This is the start of a new arc in the series, and so even though it technically continues the war begun in the last book, it does so in a manner that could work almost as well as an introduction for anyone jumping in midway through the series. It has a new storyline which introduces several new things and doesn't really resolve any of them, since this is the first book in a three-book arc. It leaves a lot for later, and reminds the reader of the status of some open plot threads but doesn't close any one thing that I can think of. Darren definitely sounds older than he did before, which makes sense in terms of both age and experience. 

The plot is that Darren has to leave the mountain with some companions in order to do a quest, one which will likely take a while to complete, but upon which hangs the fate of all the vampires. This isn't my favorite in the series so far, not because it gets anything wrong per se, but because it's hard to dazzle in this in-between state of a new plot arc midway through an ongoing series. It has to do a lot of setup without getting the opportunity for a lot of payoff, though I trust that'll arrive soon.

A good entry in the series overall, and I'm looking forward to the next one.

Harry and Barry are twins, temporarily staying at their recently-deceased great-uncle's farm when they discover something strange about the backyard shed. 

Harry is content being a twin, he's more bothered by how vocally Barry seems to hate being his twin. This tension drives a very drastic choice Harry makes late in the book. Their relationship revolves around meager attempts at bonding followed by bullying in various forms. There's a neighbor girl who exists mostly as an outsider to verify that what they think is happening has actually happened. She serves to shift the balance of power between them (usually in Barry's favor) rather than having an endless back-and-forth of the kind it seems they had at home.

The worldbuilding is well done, a bunch of little things early on end up having a pretty cool answer, fitting together in a great way. I like the plot, but the ending has an ambiguity which makes it hard to know whether it's supposed to be read triumphantly or as horror. I come down more on the side of horror, but I definitely didn't pick up on that when I first read it as a teenager.