syllareads's Reviews (951)

An Ember in the Ashes is the first book in Saaba Tahir's series of the same name and it introduces us to the Martial Empire, a place where the Scholar faction is oppressed by the military-centered Martial faction. Laia is a scholar and lives with her grandparents and her brother Darin, when a Mask, an elite soldier, arrests her brother for treason and kills her grandparents in front of her eyes. Devastated, Laia tries everything to free her brother - even if it means serving as a slave to the very woman who commands the greatest military academy the land has ever seen...

Elias, a soldier, is in his last year at the academy, but his thoughts only concern themselves with one thing: freedom. Freedom from the academy, freedom from the Empire, freedom from his mother, the Commandant. Freedom from the blood on his hands. But when the Emperor's lineage is about to fail and the Trials for a replacement begin, he can't escape his fate anymore...

This book was even more gruesome than I expected it to - I'll be adding some serious trigger warnings on here, as much as I can think about. Laia was a wonderful character intent on saving herself and what little else was left of her tiny family, whereas Elias served as a reminder that dark places punish even the ones unwillingly born into them. I'm not sure I breathed sometimes. Secondary characters served as a nice way of lending different motivations to our main characters.

I wasn't always the biggest fan of how easily Elias and Laia seemed to at least get interested in one another but I'm interested to see how the author continued this train of thought in the later books! The twist at the end of this one was surprising but well-enough executed. A good read - mind the warnings, though!

Sleeping Giants is the first book in the Themis Files series which spans 3 main books so far. All of these books are a series of recorded interviews sorted into files (thus, the name). This was a completely different format from what I am used to reading, so it did take a bit of getting used to - but ultimately, it grew on me and it fits the entire idea surprisingly well! Readers, be warned: since this is entirely in recorded interviews, there is a lot of "tell" instead of "show" going on (obviously), so if you think you won't be loving this or you find yourself turned off after a few chapters, do yourself the favor and don't power through. It doesn't "get better".

Everything begins when young Rose Franklin falls into a hole and gets discovered lying on the palm of a giant hand made entirely of metal. Years later, a grown-up and newly made Dr. Rose Franklin dedicates her life to unearthing the mystery that the hand poses, as well as the question: is there more of it? And if so, where is the rest? 

And why is it here?

Like I already said, the book's strange style quickly grew on me, especially after getting to know more of the characters. The one person that's still a mystery to me after all this time is the interviewer himself - we learn nothing about him (apart from the fact that I'm pretty sure he's male, given that people use "he/him" pronouns when talking about him) in the first book but he gains a very clear, if slightly snobbish and cold-hearted presence throughout the entire book. Quick flashes of humanity round up his mysterious character. The rest of the ensemble are interviewed in turn, some also provide some diary entries of an even more personal nature.

The lack of prose made some of the interviews, especially at a later date when everything seems to fall apart, appear even more haunting, and I can't wait to dive into book 2 - I need to know more!

In short: do read this if you're ready to experiment with a new style, if you're already a fan of found footage-style books and/or if your love for scifi expands to make room for political interests too. Do not if most of these, especially the ones related to the style, don't appeal to you at all; I'm fairly sure you won't enjoy it otherwise. You might want to try and give the audiobook a go, though: from what I've heard, they hired one narrator for each character to give the interviews the right vibes!

I finally picked up book 1 of the Millenium series and I was not disappointed.

The girl with the dragon tattoo (or, the German title "Verblendung", as I read it in German) is the first book in Stieg Larsson's critically acclaimed Millenium series, a slew of books that deal with Mikael Blomkvist, founder of the independent paper "Millenium" (no doubt the reason why this series bears its title), who stumbles over a mystery in book one that he cannot quite let go of. Not exactly because he wants to solve it out of curiosity, but because the "owner" of said mystery, a millionaire named Henrik Vanger, pays him a hefty sum after an article gone awry. Instead of Mikael seeing himself without a job after he's gotten himself into legal trouble over defamation, he gains a simple job: pretend to write a family chronicle while in fact digging for the root of another mystery that has plagued an old man for years: What happened to Harriet Vanger, who vanished off a closed-off island in 1966?

Off to a slow start, Larsson gives himself a good 100+ pages to set the entire stage for his mystery but after the pace picks up, there's not one quiet moment for our MCs who could not be more different: Mikael is soon joined by Lisbeth Salander, a young 24-year-old woman who could not be more different to him if she tried. These two, when finally meeting on-page, make for an iconic if strange duo that mainly functions because Mikael simply accepts everything Lisbeth throws at him and Lisbeth thrives from the freedom he provides her through his actions. After upping the pace like that, Larsson's gritty mystery continues until a finale that left me devouring the pages at breakneck speed. I also fully appreciated the way he doesn't simply cut off the story when all is said and done but gives his characters and readers a chance to catch their breath in his final act of weaving every last bit of story together.

I'm eager to read book two, The girl who played with fire, this month and I hope to continue thinking rather highly of this series!

This was an enjoyable if a rather predictable read save for one thing I would like to critique first and foremost once I get to the things I did not like.

Splintered is a dark Alice in Wonderland retelling where our MC, Alyssa, learns that she has to venture into Wonderland to find a cure for her mother who's stuck in a mental institution (more about that later). She's accompanied by an old friend of hers, Jeb, who forms one end of the (rather predictable) love triangle (sadly, the two boys do not fall in love), and experiences various adventures in a rather fucked up version of Wonderland that reminded me of the game Alice: Madness Returns in that it takes things from the original book and cranks them up to the max when it comes to their eerie weirdness.

The setting itself was as bizarre as the premise promised (tho I have to say, the author definitely took more inspiration from the later Johnny Depp movie than the actual children's book. I'm not complaining per se, I'm just saying). The characters were... alright, tho I highly appreciated the fact that one of the love interests, Morpheus, at least calls himself the trash he is (figuratively; he just admits that he hasn't given Alyssa any reason to trust him by the end since he constantly manipulated her without telling her the truth about anything), which, kudos to that, I drink to a fucked up bitch who will at least admit to their nature. The rest of it was pretty standard procedure, which I didn't mind but which also didn't particularly stand out that well.

Slight spoiler, but is anyone else bothered by the hatred Jeb gets? No? Just me? Because damn if that boy doesn't get it from all sides. I agree that he's not the white knight Alyssa sometimes seems to think he is, and the way he's contrasted with Morpheus' obvious wickedness does him a lot of favours he doesn't entirely deserve, but am I really seeing people here saying Morpheus is better because "he at least believes Alyssa can handle herself"?? Excuse me, the main reason he tells her that is so she goes off and becomes Queen for his sake and does him all the favours in the goddamn world without knowing what he wants and what the price for that is?! How is that better than "Hey, so we're in Wonderland, this is fucked up, you're obviously not good at decision-making from my POV because all you do is head straight into danger without even telling me you have a plan, so I might want to protect you from yourself and the rest of the world because you give me no reason to believe you actually can handle yourself"-Jeb? In fact, how can no one see it's actually worse?

I'm not saying either of those guys is good for Alyssa and hey, I like unhealthy relationships in fiction as much as the next gal, especially when the trashy glittery asshole at least admits to being a trashy glittery asshole, but please don't pretend like you have the moral superiority with one ship when in fact, all the dude does is support a woman who does what he wants her to through subtle manipulation.

That is all

Now to the bit I did not like:

The mental illness "rep". I don't even want to call it that, sigh.

Basically, Alyssa's mother is in a mental institution practically from page 0, or even before that, since she's been institutionalised when Alyssa was very young. I say "mental institution"; the book calls it "local asylum".

:))

To make matters worse, Alyssa's visit is one of the most bizarre, irresponsible things this book has ever portrayed, and honestly more a horror-flick, Victorian-esque romanticised version of a mental institution (pardon: Asylum :)) ) than anything else. Wicked nurse with giant syringe, inscribed with the patient's name? Check. Letting the inmate dress like Alice in Wonderland, then leaving her unsupervised when she got in there in the first place because she hurt her daughter? Check. Using a straitjacket on her for multiple days in a row? Obviously. 

Now I don't know if the author's intentions were ever to portray mental illness/institutions realistically. If yes, then she has failed, and dare I say in the most offensive way possible. If no, then at least she has not failed in doing what she wanted to do but it still doesn't sit right with me to use mental illness as a prop to make your story grittier or "weirder" for weirdness' sake. Please stop that.

If you intend on reading this book, please be aware of this - either because it might want to make you be careful reading through or because you need to understand that this kind of aesthetics~ shtick is seriously not a good look or move.

The Silence of the girls is another retelling of the Iliad - or, well, rather the Battle of Troy and most specifically, its most well-known fighter, Achilles. The book lends itself to comparisons with Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller so I will get those right out of the way and say: these two books work rather well as companion books of the same story but from different perspectives - if you, by any chance haven't yet read both of them, I'd suggest starting with this one first, though, partly because Miller's prose is unrivaled in its tender bruising whereas Pat Barker did not snare me with her words but rather the story itself.

Told mostly from Briseis' perspectives, this Greek war camp is entirely different than the one Patroclus offers us in SoA. Gritty, dark, full of dangers for herself and the other women, she's thrust into camp after seeing her own brothers slaughtered before her eyes, where Achilles takes her as his war prize. Briseis endures, like all the other women as well, their grief silent and forgotten as they become mere things, slaves to the men who killed their family. This is not her story - as she herself says. This is merely her being unable to separate herself from her captors, the way all women's stories went during that time. This is a woman's life, tongue, and thoughts being used to portray the grand men of history - and portray them she does, her own disgust and hatred carefully hidden lest she die for it.

The only thing I did not like about this book as much was the prose; partly because comparisons with SoA did not do this book any favours and partly because Barker likes to insert slang words and idioms into the text that simply do not work in this context. This is also why I am deducing one star from its final rating - I can otherwise only highly recommend it but remind people to heed the content warnings: there are aplenty.

This anthology is a wild mix of different Folktales from the British Isles brought back to life by 10 talented authors from all around the Isles. These retellings focus both on the magical aspects of the folktales but manage to quietly plant some modern approaches to feminism as well, giving these ideas ways to grow within ancient settings - it was quite magical to witness.

I can't clearly say that I have a favourite, as all of these tales were beautiful in their own ways, but two I particularly enjoyed were The Panther's Tale, where a lost and bewitched Princess is brought over to the Isles, ripped from her homeland and imbued with a curse that turns her into a large panther, and meets a miller's wife and her daughter - and Between Sea and Sky, a rather different take on selkie legends, where a young woman bears a selkie man a child thus born between sea (the selkie man) and sky (her name is Skye). 

All of these tales had a fascinating way with words, imbueing old legends with queer, free and beautifully fierce women intend on telling their stories, if nothing else, and I am very glad I read it. I did not know about most of these tales beforehand, either, and I'm doubly glad the book includes the old legends which these authors took to make them their own, so I could look them up afterward and trace what inspired them through the original lines.

I highly recommend these short stories to anyone who feels like the magical, whimsical and horrifying world of fairytales and folktales is preferrable to our own; though be warned: a lot of these stories deal with the real world as well, just perhaps through the lense of something older walking the earth.

Sea Monsters is Chloe Aridjis' third novel, a short but breathtaking piece of art with a meandering voice weaving in and out of the pages like the waves it's trying to describe.

We follow Luisa, a 17-year-old girl who one day decides to follow a young man she hardly knows, Tomás Román, away from her home and onto the "Beach of the Dead", Zipolite. There is not much else plot to be had - most of the book is taken up with Luisa's musings as to how and why she ended up on this beach, her retellings of the past that formed her and the lonely voice of a young girl crying out to the world without understanding it fully.

Aridjis' way of writing is as mesmerizing as it can be slightly confusing at times. The entire novel feels like one big internal monologue, a feeling which is even more reflected by the missing quotation marks for when characters actually deign to speak out loud - it makes the reader feel as if even those loud words might simply be figments of imagination for our young main character. I was at times unsure about this very thing, not knowing if Luisa was actually talking out loud or simply thinking to herself, but instead of making me confused it gave the book a unique, compelling feeling to it; the feeling that we were, indeed, completely stuck in Luisa's head with no chance of leaving until we finished the very last page.

I thoroughly enjoyed this short read though I am certain that people from Luisa's background might find far more things in this piece of art to enjoy.

I still cannot quite believe that this book is Micaiah Johnson's debut because it's just so flawlessly executed in almost every single way. The Space between Worlds is a scifi novel about humankind discovering that there's more than one reality - but to travel between the 380 worlds their sensors managed to pick up, your doppelganger in the one world you intend to travel to has to be dead. Otherwise, the travel will kill you, as the world (or Nyame, as the traversers call the void between worlds, or perhaps their goddess, no one is really sure) will kill you since there can ever be only one person of each kind in a world.

Cara is dead in almost every one of these realities - in all, in fact, but 8. And so she's one of her company's most requested traversers; right up until she gets a call that another of her dops (a slang adopted by traversers to talk about their doppelgangers in other worlds) has died in world 175. What seems to be just a normal mission exposes things she's never bothered to look at closely before, right up until she can no longer ignore them.

This book effortlessly talks about racism, exploitation of those suppressed by a system no one in power cares to dismantle, and domestic abuse all the while serving up a deliciously, deliriously dangerous plot Cara gets swept away with. Johnson's language is beautiful and evocative, leaving you craving for more once you close the book for the very last time. Cara's inner self, rough from her life on the outskirts of society, beautiful from within her very own heart, honest and craving, and surviving is laid bare to us within less than 350 pages. Her feelings for Dell, her watcher, a woman who accompanies her on her missions to faraway realities via headset, are sharp and painful, because for all her wanting, she's convinced Dell will never want her back - and yet, she cannot help herself.

I fell in love with this book and I can only recommend it to everyone else!

This is the second book in the "Hostage of Empire" series, a vaguely East-Asian inspired fantasy series stock-full of political intrigue, morally grey to extremely dark-grey characters and beautiful prose.

Several things about this book make me rank it lower than I normally would with this: 

First: The author is not East Asian, not even diaspora if my research is correct. Their "representation" on paper is therefore possibly more of an aesthetics thing than anything else - I'm not knowledgeable enough when it comes to matters like this but even I could notice that the names for the respective countries and their people seem to be a bit of a hodgepodge of different Asian cultural naming techniques. There's also a barrage of clichés I do not feel comfortable calling true or false - like the filial but obedient daughter Yara is supposed to be. Personally, I'd be more comfortable knowing the author is drawing on her own culture than simply using this as a backdrop for her book

Second: As much as I love Takshin, I did not enjoy what he did by the end of the book - I'm a fan of messy relationships but this one came a bit out of left field for me, or at least the particular brand of messiness. I'm intrigued to see where it will lead but I wasn't very pleased with it in the book :))

Overall, apart from that, the book is a good second book to the series. Things escalate a lot further than they did in book one and by the end of it all, we're left with a crumbling Empire and a broken shard of family, scattered between life and death, fidelity and their own gain. It's certainly a dark note to be leaving the world this time around! 

It is indeed very fitting that I should read this book on the second day of Pride Month! <3

Cemetery Boys is a fun, whimsical and still heartfelt story about a trans boy, Yadriel, who feels the need to prove to his family that he is, in fact, a brujo (and not a bruja like a big part of his family insists he has to be) - and his grand plan for this: Summon the ghost of a newly deceased brujo, show him off to the family, ???, success.

Only: He does not summon his cousin Miguel, but rather Julian, local troublemaker bad boy who hadn't even known (up until this point) that he was supposed to be dead! And when Yadriel tries to release him, Julian insists on staying, stubborn to a fault, so he can protect his found family and see to it that things are in order (and also, who wouldn't want to stay in this world, just a bit longer?). And so, Yadriel lets himself get pulled into an adventure he hadn't seen coming...

I really, really enjoyed this book! The writing is funny, the characters are beautiful and I would die for all of them, and the author, Aiden Thomas, manages to both convey humor in his writing AND show just how much Yadriel struggles with his family (but not his own identity), how their slipups hurt him and yet how much he does not allow himself to be angry for this because he unconsciously centers everyone else first but himself. It's a beautiful story about a boy finding his place in the world and with people who love him - not just precisely because he didn't know where he wanted to stand, but because others had to realize that his, Yadriel's, place in the world was exactly here: as a brujo of his family clan, side by side with the other men.

The found family in this one made me cry a tiny bit, I will admit to that.

The twist at the end worked very well and was nicely put into the narrative basically from the start, even tho it was thus a tiny bit TOO predictable. Nonetheless, I highly recommend this book, especially if you are, like me, queer, and would like, like me, see queer characters doing queer and entirely whimsical, magical things.