mars2k's Reviews (226)

Create Dangerously

3.5

hopeful reflective fast-paced

I’m not sure what to make of this book. There are some fantastic quotes but Camus’s arguments overall aren’t particularly precise or revelatory.

The titular speech contends that art should not be superficial but it shouldn’t be propagandistic either, and it should speak truth without trying to replicate reality (an impossible task). It is, according to Camus, the artist’s responsibility to not succumb to either extreme.

“Art cannot be a monologue.”

“Art is neither complete rejection nor complete acceptance of what is. It is simultaneously rejection and acceptance, and this is why it must be a perpetually renewed wrenching apart.”

There are two supplementary speeches: “Defence of Intelligence” and “Bread and Freedom.” “Defence of Intelligence” discusses the importance of logic in a world filled with violence and hatred. It’s a little pretentious but sure, okay. “Bread and Freedom,” like “Create Dangerously,” advocates balance, this time between freedom and justice. I remember some evocative phrases like “the doves of peace do not perch on gallows!” but that’s about it.

There’s not much to dislike about Create Dangerously but it’s not that deep. Perhaps Camus’s observations were more impressive in the 1940s and 50s but now they seem quite plain.

Content Warnings

Phoenix Extravagant

Yoon Ha Lee

3.0

fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I was surprised to learn Phoenix Extravagant wasn’t Yoon Ha Lee’s debut novel – many of its shortcomings are typical of new writers, such as repetitive phrasing and telling rather than showing. It’s a shame, really, because it had potential. A book about a nonbinary artist in a dystopian world of sigil-powered automata is a fantastic pitch, but the execution is so-so.

An issue throughout is the emotionality lacking depth or simply not landing. I partially blame the protagonist, Jebi, who is pretty apathetic for the most part. If they don’t care about anything, why should I? But I think the problem runs deeper than that, because even moments which elated or terrified or shocked Jebi fell flat for me. Take

their relationship with Vei

for example. There is no chemistry between them and the whole affair comes out of nowhere. I am told that they are in love but I’m not made to feel it.

In many ways, Jebi simply isn’t protagonist material. They’re an asshole and they don’t have the charisma to make up for it. Characters as unpleasant as they are are best confined to short stories and novellas, I feel – that way you don’t have to endure them for too long. Jebi is also frustratingly passive. On the rare occasions that they do take action, it always backfires thanks to their glaring incompetence. I know their lack of agency is a reflection of the oppressive system they find themself trapped within, but the way they kept blurting out secrets or wandering off and immediately getting captured was even more annoying and less compelling than their head-down resignation to the status quo.

The story ends with a message that not everyone is a fighter and the world needs artists just as much as it needs revolutionaries. It’s a nice idea, but Jebi still could have become a better person or helped out in a more substantial way than fucking off to the moon. It feels like whatever character arc they might have had got snapped back to where they were at the start, caring only about themself and their art and distancing themself from political issues as much as possible. Vei is also there, I guess.

There are more plot holes and inconsistencies than I can count. For example, the financial struggles of Jebi and their sister Bongsunga are sometimes front-and-centre and sometimes completely forgotten about in scenarios where it really should have affected the outcome. I was often left feeling like I was going crazy. To say nothing of the scenes that happen out of nowhere as though the author suddenly remembered they’re important to the plot. I already mentioned the awkward romance, but I also want to talk about

the torture scene, which seems to exist purely to justify the later killing of Hafanden. It doesn’t really serve any purpose besides presenting Hafanden as an irredeemable villain. Were it not for that one scene, would he have deserved execution?

It’s an interesting question which the story doesn’t seem to want to grapple with.

Which brings me to Arazi...

Arazi is a magical mechanical dragon designed to be used as a weapon, but subtle sabotage in its creation caused it to be a staunch pacifist. That is, until the final act. During an ambush, Arazi kills Hafanden in order to save Jebi’s life. An act of justified violence, maybe, but violence nonetheless, and lethal violence at that. Arazi was a bit bummed out but it didn’t have time to sit with the implications of what it had done. Its defining trait – its pacifism and its refusal to kill – had just been tested and ultimately contradicted, and with nowhere near the gravity a moment like that deserves.

Throughout the book, Arazi puts forward intriguing philosophical questions that get pushed aside to be dealt with later. And, of course, they’re never followed up on. I'm not expecting the author to construct an exhaustive thesis on the nature of the soul and the self, but some exploration of these concepts in the story would be nice. Arazi and the other automata are constantly sidelined despite the book being about them.

There are so many issues I could pick apart but I think I’ll stop here. Between the flat characters, the lack of follow-through on interesting concepts, and the inconsistencies throughout, Phoenix Extravagant is hard to recommend. That said, it’s largely inoffensive. I appreciate what the author was going for, at least, even if it feels half-baked. I don’t think it’s bad but I’m glad I’m done with it.

Content Warnings

The Magic Fish

Trung Le Nguyen

4.5

emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

An enchanting story that weaves together narratives of the past, the present, and fairy tales. The Magic Fish broke my heart and lovingly stitched it back together.

Content Warnings

Squire

Nadia Shammas

3.5

adventurous hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I was really excited to read Squire – so much so that I preordered the book and now hold a first edition copy in my hand. While I did enjoy it, I feel like it’s lacking something that I can’t quite put my finger on.

I know other readers adored the artwork but I personally found it to be a bit hit-and-miss, especially early on. For every beautifully intricate illustration of an ornately decorated dagger, there is a panel with wildly out of proportion figures and a background so empty it looks unfinished and forgotten. I understand the need to draw quickly and efficiently, but I can see the art was rushed and there were mistakes, like

Aiza putting on a bandage to cover her tattoo (major plot point!) only for that bandage to be missing a couple of pages later.

The characters are well-developed but the worldbuilding isn’t as rich and robust as I’d like it to be. Though the Middle Eastern influences are clear in the aesthetic choices, the history and the culture of Bayt-Sajji and its colonies lack depth. Likewise, the anti-imperialist message needed more weight.

At first I was annoyed that General Hende was the chief antagonist. It felt like an easy out – our heroes defeat the Big Bad and so we get a nice and tidy conclusion to the story while not properly addressing the colonial power that’s supposed to be the focus. But, upon reflection, I think what they did with Hende works quite well. She represents Bayt-Sajji. Her demise can be read as parallel to the eventual fall of the empire, in that she wasn’t defeated by a gang of plucky young heroes, she was defeated by her own hubris and her self-destructive refusal to stand down. I suppose you could argue that Aiza represents Ornu, in that she’s the catalyst to that downfall. There’s a satisfying contrast between Hende refusing to give up and Aiza proudly announcing “guess I’m a quitter” at the very end of the story.

On the topic of symbolism, I really like the way that olives were used to represent healing. It’s a recurring motif that’s deceptively simple. The little botanical drawings quietly interrupt the pacing, making the action and the dialogue pause for just a moment as healing takes place. Details like this make me tempted to give the book a four star rating, but I’m sticking to three and a half.

Squire isn’t bad but it could have been better. Both the art and the writing needed further development. I can’t bring myself to give it a higher rating because it feels so incomplete. I’ve seen other reviewers wondering if there’ll be a sequel and while the idea that every piece of media needs to be transformed into a series frustrates me to no end, I do understand where this yearning/speculation is coming from. It does feel like there should be more. Squire is similar to Locatelli’s Persephone in a lot of ways – good and bad. Persephone’s execution was just a tad better.

Content Warnings

Women, Race & Class

Angela Y. Davis

4.5

challenging dark informative medium-paced

Women, Race & Class features frank discussion of, as the title suggests, sexism, racism, and classism. It can get pretty brutal at times, focusing for the most part on the conditions of slavery (particularly for enslaved women) and on the fight(s) for equality immediately after the abolition of slavery in the United States.

Davis examines the unique oppression experienced by Black women on account of both their gender and their race, and the ensuing need for intersectional politics. She highlights the solidarity between abolitionists and early feminists, but she also examines instances where solidarity was lacking to say the least – feminists buying in to horrifically racist accusations that Black men are almost all sexual predators, for example. I previously wasn’t aware that the Republican Party had weaponised women’s suffrage against Black enfranchisement, appropriating what should have been a push for social justice as a Trojan horse for racist propaganda and policies. It doesn’t surprise me, of course, but historical details like that are worth learning and learning from.

This book is over forty years old now, yet it remains infuriatingly relevant. It’s powerful and incisive – I would recommend reading it if you haven’t already. I can see why Angela Davis is such a celebrated writer, and I’m eager to read her other famous book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, when I get the chance.

Content Warnings

Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation

Silvia Federici

4.0

challenging dark informative reflective slow-paced

Let’s get this out of the way first and foremost: Silvia Federici is a TERF. I hear her recent works are more explicitly trans exclusionary, but even here, in this book published in 2004, her firmly cissexist worldview is apparent. And, look... I get it. Federici is a Marxist philosopher and her analysis, as such, focuses on material reality. I understand why this perspective might lead her to reject a nebulous model of identity rooted in subjectivity and social constructivism in favour of something more tangible. So, while I find her approach to gender rather lacking and overly simplistic at best, I do recognise that it’s not entirely reactionary.

It’s tricky, because gender has historically been conflated with sex. Caliban and the Witch is about gender in Early Modern Europe (predominantly England), a society which, to my knowledge, had no concept of a third gender or of transness. Sure, there were almost certainly people who we would retroactively label trans or nonbinary or genderqueer, but they wouldn’t have thought of themselves that way. Those categories didn’t exist yet, let alone the terminology, so Federici’s exclusivity is a little more defensible here than it would be in a book about gender in the 21st century, or the 20th, or perhaps the 19th. “The female body, the uterus” works well as commentary on how women were reduced to their anatomy and their supposed purpose of bearing children... until you realise that is how the author genuinely conceives (no pun intended) of womanhood.

There’s a lot more I could say about this particular aspect of her philosophy and politics, but I don’t want it to be the only thing I talk about. I took it upon myself to critique this book in good faith and, while the bioessentialism is indeed disappointing, Federici’s writing is otherwise quite thoughtful and insightful.

Caliban and the Witch is surprisingly accessible for how informative it is. It delves into primitive accumulation and the origins of capitalism, the changing role of women in society, the policing of sexuality, and the origin of “the witch” as a figure to fear and punish. It challenges the mainstream view that the witch trials came to an end because the Enlightenment’s scientific discipline triumphed over superstition, instead arguing that superstition was never the point. The Middle Ages were rife with superstition, yet no witches were burned then, and many proponents of the persecution (eg: Thomas Hobbes) didn’t believe in magic. Federici argues that the witch trials existed primarily to subjugate women, and that they came to an end because women were no longer seen as a threat to those in power. She notes similarities with Nazi ideology, which uses a contradictory combination of science and superstition as a means to an end, and with counter-terrorism, which rallies suspicion even without evidence of wrongdoing.

The book has a preface and an introduction, and each chapter has its own separate introduction as well. Together with the meandering and tangent-laden text, it makes for a slow read. It’s also quite dense in places, though the artwork did help to break it up. I often find that illustrations in academic literature don’t add much, but these Early Modern woodcuts and engravings did complement the writing well.

Would I recommend Caliban and the Witch? Yes, I think so. Perhaps it would be best to buy a second hand copy or borrow it from a library if you’re uncomfortable giving money to this particular author, but I don’t think it’s a book that ought to be avoided outright. It’s interesting, I learnt a lot from it, and I’d consider it a solid demonstration of Marxist feminism.

Content Warnings

Vertigo & Ghost

Fiona Benson

4.5

dark emotional tense

The first half was spectacular. The second half was a little all over the place, plus there were instances of fatphobia and racism that kind of spoiled it. But there’s a lot more good material than bad in Vertigo & Ghost.

Content Warnings

Persephone

Loïc Locatelli-Kournwsky, Edward Gauvin

4.0

adventurous hopeful mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Visually, Persephone is fantastic. The Studio Ghibli influence is clear, and the cross-hatching adds a darker dimension that perfectly represents that feeling of a sunny utopia haunted by the spectre of war. I love the eclectic mix of magic, myth, and modernity in the crafting of this universe. The character designs are great for the most part, though the “catkin” Azrael looks less Puss in Boots and more Mogwai. The colours are well chosen – pastel palettes with black shadows; a mix of warm and cool hues but a distinct lack of green in the land where plants don’t grow.

I should note that I don’t mind it not being a faithful retelling of the original Persephone myth (there is no definitive version of that story anyhow). All the key elements are present: Persephone’s abduction, the pomegranate trick trapping her in Hades, the crop failure theme, and the central mother/daughter relationship. Probably the most significant difference is that in this version of the story, Persephone falls in love with Hades the place rather than Hades the person. And I think that works well, not only because this version of Persephone is a child but also it’s nice to see her fall in love with a place and the community that lives there.

The reason I’m not giving this book a rating higher than four stars is that the story (or at least its execution) is a bit lacking. Stuff just kind of happens, for example,

a family friend giving Persephone Demeter’s diary because it’ll be important for exposition reasons later.

The worldbuilding is super compelling but there’s not a lot of payoff to what’s set up. Atrocities seem to be hinted at but are not fully reckoned with by the characters or the narrative. I’m left second-guessing myself about what’s meant to be insidious and what’s an oversight on the author’s part (or just me overthinking things as usual).

Eleusis can be interpreted as an imperial power actively working to subjugate Hades, though even a charitable reading shows it to be a wealthy region that turns a blind eye to suffering despite having the means to help. At the end of the story, when crops begin to grow again in Hades, the Eleusinian response is ghoulish – it is seen merely as an opportunity for trade and tourism. The Hadeans finally having enough to eat after years of famine? Unimportant. What matters is how Eleusis can benefit. This goes unremarked upon, which makes me wonder whether it’s intended to be uncomfortable. And where is the resolution? Persephone finds a new purpose in Hades, free from the weighty expectations Eleusinians place on her for being Demeter’s daughter. But Demeter herself? Eleusinians more broadly? They don’t learn anything or change their ways. The treacherous Mithra is defeated and Demeter indicates that she suspects a larger conspiracy, and that’s it. The ending is unsatisfyingly inconclusive, as though it’s setting up a non-existent sequel.

The more I think about Persephone, the more I’m paradoxically both delighted and disappointed. Overall, it’s a solidly good book – don’t get me wrong. Even if some political aspects feel un(der)addressed, I actually really like that there’s a lot to think about. It’s far more interesting than I thought it’d be, and it’s definitely a book I would recommend.

Content Warnings

This Is How You Lose the Time War

Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar

2.5

adventurous emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

If you like this book (and I know a lot of people really do), don’t take my disappointment as an indication that you’re wrong to feel the way you do. I’m glad you enjoyed it, but I just didn’t.

Red and Blue make purple, and this prose sure is purple. Every. Single. Sentence. Is trying so hard to be poetic and deep. Metaphors are great and all but this is just too saturated with them to make any real sense. The characters and their relationship didn't feel especially substantive to me. I like the combination of spirituality and science fiction and there’s some neat imagery here and there, but for the most part I found This Is How You Lose the Time War to be a confusing mess and nothing more.

Content Warnings

Axiom's End

Lindsay Ellis

4.0

adventurous tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This is YA. That’s not a positive or negative judgement, just an observation. It wasn’t marketed as YA fiction as far as I recall but that is absolutely how it reads – a college-age protagonist who needs to learn a lesson or two about responsibility, an intermittently-relevant family, awkward romance, drama, angst, queer rep, etc. I enjoyed it but I can see I’m not the target audience.

Also,

I feel like a lot more could have been done with the fact that Ampersand’s knowledge of Earth culture was hundreds of years out of date. He could have spoken Middle English, for example. The point was that he thought humans were violent and backwards, owing to the fervent religious fundamentalism and purges he witnessed in the wake of the Black Death. But then that seems kind of unnecessary, because we’d already seen him horrified by humans eating meat – there was no need to invoke medieval atrocities when there are already aspects of modern life which he finds abhorrent.

This may seem nitpicky but it’s superfluous details like this that end up making the book at least a hundred pages longer than it needed to be. Thankfully, the quick pace prevented the story from feeling like a slog.

I’d recommend Axiom’s End to fans of Stephenie Meyer’s The Host. It has a similar vibe.

Content Warnings

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