sunn_bleach's Reviews (249)

Now that I've finished BOTNS, I can firmly state that the first book was exactly worth it. So many things that don't make sense on first blush but slowly become revealed throughout the entire series to the reader who's paying attention. I find myself utterly entranced by Wolfe's description of a world based on the detritus of ages past - and how exactly that detritus fits into the narrative arc is similarly extraordinary. I loved this, from Triskele to the Sanguinary Fields, and like Wolfe's "Peace" it'll change how I view unreliable narrators forever.

"The Last Wish" is a compilation of short stories with a small framing device of Geralt recovering from the trauma of a hunt that almost went wrong. I read this because I needed something light after "Book of the New Sun", and I've wanted to see where it all began regarding the video games.

It's easy to see how this adapted perfectly to games, as each short story acts as a standalone quest much like what's in a standard epic fantasy game. But otherwise, I find this very difficult to go back to, and I would only recommend it for someone like me who's interested in the background of The Witcher series rather than these actually being good. The games sanded off much of the roughness of the 90s, fixed the writing issues, adapted the best ideas, and forewent much of the poorly-aged aspect, like how every woman is either stupid or must be assaulted, like the insipid "realism" people point to in defense of Game of Thrones. It's not "real", it's just crass, and you should read an actual history book.

Overall a meh experience. The translator problems are real; Geralt pirouettes more than a Bolshoi Ballet prima, and everyone is always locking eyes with each other while sneering. The fractured fairytales approach is so ingrained in modern pop culture (and wasn't new back then) that I find it difficult to care or find subversive.

There's a small part of me that would read "Sword of Destiny" as the next short story compilation, but I could also be fine with leaving my book experience of The Witcher here and sticking to the games, which are simply better in every respect.

Along with "Shadow of the Torturer", this entry to BOTNS emphasizes the world's detritus - but it's directly confronted as opposed to the worldbuilding nature of the first entry. Here, the reader (and Severian) experience the results of humanity's off-world imports, wildlife repopulation efforts, and the culminating being human over millions of years. Case in point: Typhon. Almost a non sequitur moment, but if you've got millions of years of humanity and millions of years of humanity's plotting, then of course they'll start to build up and come to fruition at inappropriate times.

The alzabo scene is just as horrifying as you might think, and it's proof Wolfe can write abject horror in addition to his vast repertoire of implied horror.

I echo others in that the opening vignettes are fascinating, but Streever’s adventures are not. A lot of it feels so performative as to be silly; did we really need him burning his hand For Science in the beginning?

Oh Jonas, my sweet boy. What a phenomenal and realized character arc to happen in just 150 pages or so.

Second entry, and more machinations but things start to make sense. That first chapter of "The Shadow of the Torturer" sure was confusing, wasn't it? Well, you'll start picking up why and how soon enough with this one. And what exactly does the Claw do, anyway? What's the point?

Wolfe brings up more questions than answers, but a lesser author would leave it at that. Instead, Wolfe's additional questions are more like expounding upon the initial question than anything brand new.

Overall, I feel pretty "eh" about it. I got tired of the direct quotes (not just thematic inspirations) from *Moby-Dick*, to the extent that they felt pretty forced - and that's not even counting how the opening page has *three* quotes repurposed for this book. I also felt that the story-in-a-story conceit was so much longer than needed, and it ended up being a similar retread to Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror". By page count, the flashback is half the book, and it makes the eventual fishing trip that caused Abe such trauma to be humorously perfunctory. Likewise, there were some eldritch-adjacent tropes that felt silly: I felt markedly disappointed when the books of eldritch tomes popped up, to say nothing of the obvious sequel hook of the gem disappearing after the Rainer party returns from "killing" the fisherman.

Writing-wise, Langan has the same problem I see in a lot of new authors: fear that the audience won't "get it". Many of the more surreal and eldritch occurrences are qualified with "as if...", adding on a metaphor that so obviously states the horrific implications that it takes out any mental effort on me as a reader to piece things together or be scared on my own merits. The silliest one was early on when the main character pulls out a weird fish/human hybrid that says something like "there fissure", and then ten pages later you hear the legend of Der Fischer.

Compare to Shirley Jackon's *The Haunting of Hill House*, where she trusts your imagination is scarier than anything she can actually write. In contrast, Langan seemed like he foreshadowed everything so hard that nothing scary felt so.

I'm stuck between loving Porter's attachment to the novella and wanting him to write more. "Shy" is one of his more divisive books (and it lacks the magical realism bent of "Lanny" and "Grief..."), but it's a heartrender and it'll speak to anyone who either had a troubled childhood, has known troubled kids, or finds themselves standing at a lake wondering how many rocks it would take. I adore how much Shy connects with music, and that attachment is one of the greater tragedies within the story.

In general I found this quite charming, not the least of which due to Le Guin's introduction. It is absolutely written for younger audiences, and I'm not convinced that Le Guin quite found her footing with some of the subtleties (like Jasper trying to be welcome to Ged, but Ged being too self-conscious to accept; amazing concept, but younger readers would likely miss it and just see Jasper as rude). It's a simplistic story with simplistic resolutions to much of the smaller plotlines, though the final reveal of the actual Shadow is prescient for young folks.

 Beloved was directly cited by the Nobel Committee upon awarding Toni Morrison with the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. I see why. Beloved is the kind of book where I want to doubt the humanity of any US citizen even tangentially familiar with slavery who isn't changed upon reading it. I finished it yesterday and stared into space for a few minutes, unhearing my fiancee ask me what kind of burgers I wanted for Memorial Day. 

Beloved was inspired by the true story of Margaret Garner - an enslaved woman who escaped to Ohio and killed her daughter before being found so her daughter wouldn't return to the horror of slavery. Horror? That word isn't powerful enough to describe American slavery. Likewise, it would be reductive to call Beloved a horror novel. Though the titular Beloved refers to the ghost of one-year old killed by Sethe (one of the book's protagonists) for the same reason Garner killed her daughter, this is so much more than that. Beloved is both her own story and a eulogy for the "sixty million and more" lost through the Atlantic slave trade - per Morrison's own dedication. 

I can't describe more. Nothing I can summarize would be appropriate. It's rare to experience any piece of media so profoundly changing, loving, and heartrending. I can't call it hopeful, but I also can't call it hopeless. The trauma (generational and personal) of slavery is expressed in so many ways - from the "tree" on Sethe's back to the two words "it rained". 

This was my first Morrison novel, and two things surprised me. First, I did not anticipate the book to be so discursive. This is not a bad thing. Characters flit back and forth between different time periods in their heads as PTSD, and several times it's an errant action or phrase that sets them off. (After writing that, a friend told me that Morrison coined the word "rememory" to describe this phenomenon; it's also used in the book.) Second, Morrison has such an incredible economy of phrase where one-off references end up having extreme impact, like

when I realized Stamp Paid was castrated or what Baby Suggs truly meant when she said "lay down your sword and shield", which was otherwise implied to mean "open your heart to love".

"We got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow." 

Mixed feelings on this book. Based on the title, I expected this to be a character study of a single tree. That’s not what the book is about; it’s more an introduction to the natural history of New England with the tree as a framing device, and climate change is more of a generalized couple of chapters rather than specific to this tree.

How I would’ve loved the conceit I expected! I guess that’s not Mapes’ fault, and she sure writes page-turningly well for any nature author. It’s just not what was presented; I could’ve used double the length with more on the witness tree itself as a paragon.