So I can never decide whether to factor "devoured over the course of a shabbat" into my ratings or not. Because I expected to with this one and I didn't and I'm not sure if that's because we went out for lunch or because the book, while fun and fascinating, didn't always grab my attention.
Anyway, I finished it this Shabbat on the floor of a hotel outside the room where my kid was sleeping...like you do. It helped to be stuck there, which is its own kind of critique of the book.
The story itself is fascinating, both Chakraborty's use of the original myth (thank you for posting it on Twitter!) and the details she constructs. This is a book that shines in its world building and its willingness to be complex. It reminds me of VE Schwab's Shades of Magic trilogy. I also liked the characters, all of whom I wanted to hug and punch in about equal measure.
I think this book's biggest issue is pacing: there were times when the timeline seemed to jump rapidly and, though I understood why we skipped over several days of boring travel, I felt as though the book had set me up to jump right back in where we'd last seen out intrepid heroes and we just didn't. I also felt some of the shifts between Alizayd and Nahri were less than ideal--I would have liked longer with each, but I also resent books that jump around too much.
Anyway, this was an ambitious first novel and, for all that Chakraborty is still trying to find her feet as a stylist, the story itself is great and I look forward to seeing what happens next.

This is definitely one of those "what the hell!?" books and I think I would hate it if it wasn't so perfectly British in how it tells the story of quiet tragedy and people just being people at one another. As a critic, I appreciate how deftly Allan handles the narrative and how every critique I have--such as finding certain bits in the middle unrealistic--is not so much a critique as an argument for reading the book a certain way. I'm annoyed because I want to read the book in the opposite direction, but squaring the circle either way is impossible and that's what makes it so brilliant. As a reader...I'm still a bit of a sucker for a neat bow and an authorial bow. The fact that I wanted one doesn't take away from the fact that Allan's book, from the beginning, lets you know it's not going to do that. But the ending is well-handled nevertheless.
Is quiet British tragedy a genre? I mean, it's the genre Kate Atkinson writes crossed with mystery and the genre McEwan writes crossed with whatever the heck interests him this week. It's intriguing to see it in SF.

I have complicated feelings about this book, both because it took a while for me to get into AND because the narrative arc is one I both love and hate. The Beauty and the Beast story is one of the narratives that turns the keys to my heart and yet it is so easy to slip into making the Beast a monster (yes, yes, I know).
The story really revolves around the idea of woman/lover as sacrifice, which is super icky...but also very Jesus-y and I don't know if the vision of Erin as Jesus makes it better (as a feminist) or worse (as a Jewish woman). But the story, especially once she meets Stephanos and becomes Sara, is gripping and my favorite part. The tragedy mamba of the first part was a bit of a slog to read...and that in and of itself says something about me.
I feel like there's more to say about this trope of love as redemption intertwined with the trope of good (or god) entering the dark world to redeem it through sacrifice.
Obviously I'm going to read the next. I'm just going to keep feeling weird about it.

So I expected to like this one less than the other two because one of my favorite reviewers did so...and it turns out I like it more.
Unexpected. I think the story's scope and insistence on being the story of Binti and not of everyone else and their global issues, but just sticking with her was part of what it took me a while to get to, but also--in the end--what worked best for me.
Huh. There was much food for thought there.

This was really fun! And shorter than I expected, but that makes sense once I realized this was the novella form and the narrative arcs were going to be short stories within the larger narrative.
It was very well done and I am already deeply invested in all these characters. So that was good.

I definitely enjoyed this book more than its predecessor; haven set up the world and the rules, Newman does a much better job of making the stakes clear and she hit her stride with this story. Magic and social issues is definitely her thing.

Holy forking shirtballs, this book was amazing!
LaValle's mix of fairy tale and slow existential parenting horror is exquisite. He has a ridiculous command of both genres and understands exactly how to situate the supernatural into the natural.
That’s not the main narrative dichotomy, although it’s an important one, and it folds into the dialectic tensions that LaValle sets up between mediated and unmediated ways of knowing, digital versus print, contemporary versus old school, and real versus unreal.
This isn’t a polemic against technology, although some of the creeping existential horror takes the form of who has access to your data and your children, nor is it a metaphor for the way that whiteness destroys young black boys, although the story—like all good fairy tales—understands the way in which it functions as a warning, nor is it even a parable for post-partum depression and the people parents turn into after having children. It’s not any of those things; it’s a glorious urban fairy tale about parents’ worst fears and modern monsters. But it is also those things and that is what makes the fairy tale so good.
Also,

The slippage between the actual troll and the internet troll is perfect.

I have been trying to read this book for forever. I had the kindle version and could not get into it because, as it turns out, not all books are easy to digest when read in short chunks on the kindle.
I finally got the audio version and just let myself listen to the story. I'm not entirely sure I got all of it. I'm not entirely sure I was supposed to.
But it was such a fascinating listening experience, especially given Samatar's elegance that makes every line feel just a bit like an epic poem, that I'm glad I figured out how to make this story work for me.

There is, I have noticed, a tendency among non-genre authors to end books with a kind of radical indeterminacy. They are books without answers, books that question the nature of reality and experience and linear time and make you think about what is true.
The fact that they don't come down on one side or another of the argument infuriates me. I'm not saying you have to be right, I'm saying you need to make a case.
"The world is less knowable than you think" is the trivial (and trivialized) version of "here be monsters". Krauss seems to be doing a kind of deconstruction, both of the novel writing process and of narrative as a way of understanding the world, where her writing creates the events of the novel...or vice versa. People become stories become people, which is not very interesting because--as Deconstruction itself has learned--it has to go somewhere.
Krauss deconstructs the imposition of narrative and time onto events, but never reflects back on the narrative she has created out of those events. Yes, the narrative is an imposition created out of its own need to be. But it is still there, made manifest by the writing of the book, and she seems unwilling to take on the responsibility--having taken it apart so thoroughly--of having brought it into existence nonetheless.
To put it another way, in its argument for why it doesn't go anywhere, the book fails to convince that there isn't somewhere it ought to have gone.

I've been meaning to read this book for forever; I've loved everything else I've read by GGK and this is one of those series that everyone has kept telling me to read.
And it's worth it. GGK is JRRT in the best way--he has a sympathy to the complexity of the world and characters in a way that echoes JRRT.
He also...trips over some of the same things that JRRT does, but he's still miles ahead--especially in terms of female characterization--even than many contemporary authors.
If you've ever wondered what the mythologies of The Dark is Rising Sequence written for adults would be like, it's this.