jaduhluhdabooks's Reviews (333)

This is a hauntingly raw book. I think reading it in the wake of what is occurring across boarders amplifies the destructive and painful realities of war, genocide, and violence. 

RF Kaung writes in details that strike the heart and prick the soul. Runin is a fearful character, who learns to wield her fear as a power and to strike back against those who so desperately want to see her fail. She is someone who knows loss and ruin and still rises because she believes she destined for more, for better. Along the way she meets characters who are her friend and who are her family. Altan is another character who knows raw grief and pain. 

The description of witnessing the events alone brought tears to my eyes and sometimes that’s all we can do. Witness. Much like Kitay who just had to watch and wait. Venka whose narrative was far from the one she carried in school. All of it is gut wrenching and profound and you just can’t look away. 

Rin is power and I’m both hesitant and excited to follow her on the remainder of this journey.

Ryan and Indy mean EVERYTHING TO ME. Upon this re read I have given it 1/4the star more because HOLY CRAP I CANT GET ENOUGH OF THESE TWO. 


they literally make me SCREAM and giggle and kick my feet and wipe my eyes and just. Perfectiiiooonnn. 

Wow. Just. Wow. 

So many thoughts, but one thing that Lillian does so powerfully and hauntingly so, is portray the voice of so many Black Americans and enslaved ancestors through these words. Not just narratives, but brutal retellings of extremely gruesome murders … using codes and algorithms. The junctures and the splits, the replication, repetition, and skipped beats. The cadence moves or halts and you can feel the abrupt stop of the tinge of the pull as you muddle through the words. Sometimes they feel fraught with pain or too loose with hopelessness. Sometimes they feel rich with power, only to be suffocated by the history that wins out in the textbooks and the objects that are so prized in our present.

These shifts are randomly calculated through a machine to make them more mundane, but instead they gave more power to the depth of a conscripted story that has lost the weight of its telling. AI is interesting and has been proven to hold its own stereotypes about history and its people and yet, the voice of the those who battled and battle still gains traction against the tools used to oppress them. It’s a common theme in the victory song of the oppressed. 

It’s a gruesome read, but I believe that to be a necessary feeling of discomfort to truly grasp the feel of Bertram’s poetry.