Dripping with atmosphere. A compelling premise that just gets more interesting as the haunting is unravelled. There’s really cool setting elements and worldbuilding and it’s just _fun_ to read. It’s got great flow and is quite short, but just long enough to feel complex and not perfunctory, which is too often what mysteries end up feeling like with novellas. Great characters, inclusive, respectful (as far as I can tell) of a foreign culture. It’s written playfully and cinematically, and sure, it’s not intricate, but I do think it’s unique and does things with reader assumptions very well.

I will read the novel that came out last month that is a sequel to this for sure.

A fantastic short story about a young girl who seeks out an Angel in Cairo in order to procure a miracle that will save her sister.

Very tightly paced, not a word wasted. Great worldbuilding, great dialogue. It’s told in 2nd person—something in vogue right now I don’t particularly care for. It can work very well in specific situations. I’m not sure it added anything to this. But it was a very cool and interesting story. I really like this world. Can’t wait to get to the novel.

This was quite hard to rate because there’s some pretty cool stuff in the plot that really pushes the saga forward in a way that the previous books do not. They all seem more like small little reboots that are continually stuck in a rut, where as this is like okay, this went somewhere and obviously sets up a finale—which is great.

A large damper on my excitement over the larger plot beats and developments, however, is the damn gender essentialist ideas in this that just never seem to cease. There are major issues with empowerment for women in these books, where their established agency usually ends up being their exact downfall. It reads like Herbert read a 70s paper on the differences between the sexes, internalized it—though all those notions are very much debunked—and just creates a through line in every major character that’s a woman. Always trying to control people through sex and these wildly antiquated ideas about gender and sexuality. Its hard to believe and not to be offended by, and because large movements of the plot hinge on them, it’s inescapable to have this cold water splashed on you right when interesting things are happening.

It’s just too bad they’re so antiquated in areas where they matter so much. It doesn’t feel like the future either, when hundreds and hundreds of years have passed since the original and yet cultures generally remain the same. Only factions rise and fall. Yet ecologies have completely changed but the ways of people don’t. It’s hard to suspend your disbelief around sometimes.

Between the plot and the philosophy I still manage to enjoy the series. It can be quite deft at intrigue and plays into fun tropes better than most; perhaps even been the progenitor of some? The setting is still fascinating and the tension of the golden path having been built over the course of so many books is palpable now. I can empathize with people who love the series and can’t stand it, to be honest. Which is why it probably ends up being middling fun for me with most every book.

The story itself is compelling, but I found that the structure and wider context was almost always missing. It’s very long to be so myopic and creates a stutter step effect. There are some moments that ground the story well and the specificity allows for the connection I was looking for; then it would shift away from those moments, moving across memories and time, assuming a lot of the reader. The story telling methods constant shifting made it much more difficult to read for me.

The parts that work the best for me were his parents’ relationship dynamics and the concrete details around his identity. But most of the narrative ends up being about particular events unfolding with some nebulous emotional associations as they unfold. If this were fiction, I would say this book has a major problem with telling instead of showing, basically. Memoirs don’t need that story telling method but it did feel like that same kind of disconnect. There is some context missing, as well as assumptions, as I mentioned earlier, that make events that should have a lot of gravitas basically feel just perfunctory.

A great story, told expertly. I can’t even imagine how much research would have gone into this. Probably a life time of stories and then a lot of targeted research later. This Jewish family story is so wild sometimes you’d think it was staged, but she’s got receipts.

The only thing I didn’t like was the authorial voice is so tight in this that when it breaks for some tangential thoughts it is exceptionally jarring. I think if all those had been an epilogue or coda or something like that, where it referenced the chapters or pages she’s using to go off on a tangent about, it could have been the best of both worlds.

She does a great job narrating her story too. The perspective matches her voice and cadence very well. Had it been a closer voice it might have felt a bit off, maybe cold and flat, as so many authors end up being reading their own books. I don’t think that’s serendipity either. This whole thing has the air of attention to detail and good craftsmanship.

This would have been an easy 4, or maybe even 5 stars for me had it felt a bit more cohesive and even. Some stories are definitely incredible and those contrast with some others where the characters or voice or premise felt tacked on or less substantial. When it’s at its best this is rooted so well thematically and with vivid concrete details that communicate so much, so well.

The problem with short story collections is that for me to get the same enjoyment I need a solid through line and quality, which is just hard to do when it’s so many different stories of varying goals. Plenty would be strong decoupled from this format and those strongest ones, I feel, would drive the intent of the book much better without the extra weight.

https://medium.com/springboard-thought/the-dutch-house-the-stories-we-tell-ourselves-called-memories-ff8fb98780f9

“Do you think it’s possible to ever see the past as it actually was?”

Son of Cyril Conroy, Danny is an unusual narrator. He recounts five decades of his life — chronicling the family affairs from when Cyril, by a stroke of luck, becomes wealthy after the second World War and purchases the titular Dutch House, to Danny’s present-day old age.

“Disappointment comes from expectation”

While more-or-less masquerading as narrative nonfiction in structure (while actually being historical fiction), The Dutch House is interestingly not very concerned with rooting the narrative in an overarching plotline. Like Danny’s memory, the narrative meanders and spends time in ostensibly unimportant granular details of his life. Moments that center either himself or his sister, Maeve. When it returns from these daydream-like moments, it is always to the chronological point established, though it gestures at Danny remembering his life from a later age.

Later, it becomes clear that Danny’s narration is as much for himself as for the reader.

It feels like he needs to make sense of his life any way he can. Perhaps that’s why it’s structured the way it is? Somewhat aimless but still captivating. This framing has Danny revealing details in a matter-of-fact manner. He does not drive to the points in his life where he is clearly a poor character with trepidation or obfuscation. He just remembers what happened. He did those things.
And that’s that.

Though this recount is undoubtedly unreliable due to, if nothing else, the fact that it is his own recollection of personal history, something which is interrogated when he and Maeve describe events shared by them differently quite often.

“I see the past as it actually was…But we overlay the present onto the past. We look back through the lens of what we know now, so we’re not seeing it as the people we were, we’re seeing it as the people we are, and that means the past has been radically altered.”

This frame — if you’ll indulge an on-the-nose metaphor—essentially paints Danny and then hangs him there bare to be viewed and interpreted by the reader as they like. This humanizes and dehumanizes him. Sometimes he treats others detestably and illustrates no introspection whatsoever afterward. These moments are rare. But I expected to dislike him more.

Those moments when Danny dwells in his past, which he habitually never fails to do, undoubtedly condemn him and telegraph his future actions to the reader. A byproduct of this is that it also builds empathy in the reader for Danny; enabling them to, possibly, forgive his actions. Because to some degree, he and Maeve are both slaves to their desires and this inability to move on.

“I only understood what I’d lost.”

Even when they do move on and are doing well, they are continually pulled on a string by the allure of their former home, the Dutch House. They imagine the life they might have had as they repeatedly physically root each other in this impossible future and mostly terrible past.

This all creates a sense of inevitably as Danny’s story marches forward.

In the end, The Dutch House makes a mockery of the harbored emotions the siblings steep themselves in. The narrative gestures at restorative justice, but it does so by showing what toxic emotions, held onto for so long, may lead to. Even as it shows that life — and time — have no regard for notions like justice or morality or “fairness”.

“We had made a fetish out of our misfortune, fallen in love with it. I was sickened to realize we’d kept it going for so long, not that we had decided to stop.”

Things continue regardless. And they always will.

Growing old is a process of annihilating your previous self. Sometimes messily, sometimes with grace. Sometimes without wherewithal.

Things that were thought to be interminable and resolute prove to be different from a new perspective.

The reasons you had to hate people never existed or have long since gone.

Who you thought you were has been replaced with who you are now.

Just like the painting of Maeve hanging in the Dutch House for decades, you can stare at it and know what it means to you — but when you are given more context it becomes something entirely different.

“There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you’d been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you’re suspended knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself.”

I liked this more than the first one. And again, this is an increment that’s rounded up to the benefit of the book. So there’s some serious trepidation.

There’s a loooot of political intrigue. I like it more than the courting stuff, and again, pacing problems, some weird gender performance dynamics, dogmatic, religious/ moral absolutism. Basically, this book made me lookup to see if Brandon Sanderson was problematic, and he is - kind of. As with Captain Homophobia, Orson Scott Card, Sanderson is also Mormon. However, it also looks like Sanderson has apologized and made substantive additions to his work and grown as a person. So it’s something people will have to make individual decisions on. Apparently later books has queer characters and he’s much more thoughtful and considerate in his views. Which is good to hear.

Because damn. A major qualm I have is Vin feeling a bit too, ‘I only know how to write strong women by making them masculine in some way’, and Ellend grappling with his love for her because she has these masculine connotations is a very big red flag to me. He does grow the fuck up about it somewhat. But, something that negatively impacted my experience for a bit. It’s very YA, but bad writing trope YA.

There is an expansion on the magic system, there’s way more interesting stakes. There’s much better fights. Deaths. Epic shit goes down. And actual character development. So ultimately, it came out ahead. There are some seriously great moments and the ending was great. I liked it more than the first one substantially, despite the Red Flags flying.

A good ending and pretty satisfying character arcs for just about every character. The overarching themes are nicely woven in, but not very interesting to me, especially as used with a couple characters. It feels simultaneously progressive and regressive, and like I mentioned in the previous book, it totally makes sense the author is LDS when you read these things. At least the moral absolutism got toned down on this one.

Once again, I grind against Sanderson’s writing style though. I find it overwritten and poorly paced. There’s always decent payoff with his books but it doesn’t erase my annoyance throughout. Probably audiobooks are the way to go for me when reading Sanderson in the future.