syllareads's Reviews (951)

Aaaah, but I struggled to review this one properly u_u

The Deathless Girls is the YA debut of author Kiran Millwood Hargrave, an author of whom I have now read 3 books. As always, her use of language is beautiful and haunting, her ending stays open (I'm starting to think this is one of her things and I do not mind it at all!) and she focuses almost exclusively on her female cast, making all of her pivotal characters female, a touch queer, and perhaps more than a touch yearning.

Why, then, am I rating it 2 stars? Well, this has its tentative reasons; I haven't done a lot of research so please take everything I say with at least a grain of salt (and do your own research if possible! Always do that!) but I have noticed some things that either some people pointed out or that I'm unsure as to what I would think about them, so my rating went down from a solid 4 stars to 2.

First of all: The setting itself
Since this short book serves as a sort of Dracula retelling but with the focus explicitly set on the brides of Dracula, rather than Dracula himself, the book is set in what would later become Romania (Dracula, for those of you who did not know, ruled over Walachia a few while back - or at least that is part of his legend). Hargrave, however, lives in Oxford and is, from what I can tell, not descended from any Romanian family branches - which leads me to my first problem: People pointing out that she is misusing the Romanian language pieces she put into her works.
I couldn't research all of them and don't bring any further knowledge to the table, but even I could find out, through a quick google search, that Dracula does indeed NOT mean "Dragon" but rather "Devil" - and that is just a very small thing. Someone on Storygraph pointed out that she is also not using the grammar correctly. I do not mind it when authors use languages in their books that are definitely from the real world because with a bit of research and sensitivity readers/translators, all is possible! However, it does become a problem when the language is then not even somewhat correct. It's one thing to do this with a fantasy language you make up and perhaps vaguely base on about 40 different dialects from our own world, but to deliberately take one culture's language and then not use it correctly is quite frankly not right in my eyes.

Second: The Diversity
I'm not sure how I feel about the main characters being Romani when the author herself isn't? I couldn't find anything about her being so (if that is the case, I will happily delete this section and apologize!), and while it did feel like she was trying to treat the culture with a certain level of care, I'm just...not sure about this. I cannot recall a book I've read by a Romani author about their culture and I feel like people like this, who have suffered so much, deserve to write their own representation before others take their pain and make it theirs. I also cannot say how well Hargrave did here, given that I myself am not Romani. I will go on a little adventure after this to try and dig out whether someone of that descent has said anything about this book in particular - again, take all of this with a grain of salt, please!

Edit: I have read other people's opinions on the diversity, specifically when it comes to the main characters being both Romani and how they're treated and will now bump my rating down accordingly. 


Overall: while I did enjoy especially the technical aspects of this book and was fascinated by the project Beatrix (a book series written about (forgotten) female characters throughout (literary) history), these two aspects up there made me rate the book lower than I would have without them. Everything expressed in this review is based on my own opinions and nothing more.

"A Desolation called Peace" is the second book in the Teixcalaanli-Duology by Arkady Martine and it shattered me to the bone.

Unlike book 1 ("A Memory called Empire") we do not only follow one POV but four: Mahit Dzmare, former Ambassador from Lsel Station, Nine Hibiscus, yaotlek (Fleet captain) to Emperor Nineteen Adze, Three Seagrass, former cultural liaison to one Lsel Ambassador, and Eight Antidote, the 90%-clone of the late Emperor Six Directions, an 11-year-old boy we got to know somewhat in book 1. Out of these four, the only new character is Nine Hibiscus, a soldier through and through who had to make some hard choices over the course of this book which I do not envy her for.

I loved all four of these perspectives. The way they intermingled, glanced at the same concept through different eyes, and minds, and memories, the way they didn't intermingle, the way they scratched and bit and tore at each other, loving and hating and wanting all the time. But the one who stole my heart perhaps the most, especially towards the end, was the perspective of an 11-year-old boy whose innocence was so thoroughly taken from him and who, despite everything, rose to a challenge he would have never seen coming shortly before that.
I cannot adequately explain how much I loved Eight Antidote in this, but I will leave a paragraph here that might do it for me

I again cannot even begin to think of sentences that would explain how much Martine's prose rips me to shreds so I can only people who liked the first book beg: Please continue this. Some things have changed, it's true, but book 2 is as much a masterpiece as book 1 was, in its own regards.

5 easy, overwhelming, overwhelmed stars.

Yaa Gyasi steals us away into a book that follows an overarching family tree, from its roots in Africa all the way to its many branches coming into their own in America, and tackles several harsh topics on the way along. It's almost unbelievable that this is her first novel; the prose, the construction of the book itself, with each main character getting one chapter to tell their story, or at least the most impactful moments in their lives, everything about this novel sucks you right in and spits you back out into a world of joy, and sadness, guilt, and letting-go, coming into your own despite the world beating down on you (or perhaps because of it, a way to spite everyone around you and maybe yourself).

I didn't expect this book to be structured the way it was (I knew virtually nothing about it beforehand) but I highly enjoyed myself reading it and fully recommend it (head the Content Warnings tho!). Gyasi tackles a lot of heavy topics in this; one branch of the overarching family tree specializes in slave trade with the British Empire, while the other gets sucked into the trade themselves, leaving Africa for good very early on. It's a tale of suffering and loss, but also of holding on to your roots and coming back to them, maybe late in life, maybe only tentatively and halfway through, but still: it's worth it, to face it all and let it soak in.

And as one of the characters teaches his students: We cannot know how history went down since we haven't been there, we can only listen to those who have. And whenever we do, we need to remember those whose voices were not remembered by the flow of time, and why that might be.

This was my first Alix E. Harrow book and I was not disappointed! Her prose is beautifully magical, weaving the story with expertise and care, her characters are flawed and human and so, so perfectly fallible it's painful to watch them live their story to its (or their) end.

Harrow intertwines the suffrage movement in America with the magic of ordinary women who just wanted more, underlining perfectly (and harrowingly) how difficult times were for a woman when she wanted to come into her own power and was denied any and all access to it by a world who pandered to no one but men in power. In fact, access to said power is often also denied by the powerless who feel the need to appease those who suppress them in order to get even a morsel of attention and, in this case, rights - a divide made clear when the three Eastwood sisters separate from the Women's Rights Association for exactly those reasons.

Throughout these historic moments, fairy tales and songs shine and simmer through the cracks, pulling the entire book together into a beautiful, fragile masterpiece. Magic gets passed down through songs, and stories, stitched into clothing and sewn into handkerchiefs, whispered between daughters and sisters like the secret it has to be.

I highly enjoyed the audiobook version of this book - the narrator Gabra Zackman had one of the most fitting voices I could have ever imagined for this book and the audiobook itself came with musical intervals that perfectly added to the magical feeling I got from the text itself

It was hard for me to rate this book because I loved certain aspects of it...and then did not care for the rest of them. So I settled on 3.5 stars (for now) and we'll go from here!

Before I say anything about this book, there is one thing that's been bothering me; not about the book per se but about some reactions to it. Mainly: the comparisons to Six of Crows.
Where exactly do people see that?
Sure, the book has a heist in it. The found family trope (notice the word "trope") plays a role to some degree. They're not exactly doing things by the law. And by now I've run out of similarities and gone straight back to "why are you constantly comparing these two books". 
Listen, I understand if you advertise this book as "if you've liked SoC you might want to check out this one!" but that is the only time you should even be thinking about any kinds of comparisons in my opinion. These books share a very, very popular trope in (YA) fiction, and criminal underground activities. That is it.

Alright! Back to the book and what I liked and didn't like.

What I liked:

I was a fan of most of the characters! Tho their introduction was a bit short sometimes, they grew on me almost instantly. They had a fun little dysfunctional found family situation going on, there were understandable tensions and heartfelt friendships (and more). What I found beautiful was also how the author navigated the world of her book and how each character faced their marginalization (if present; not all of them had even more challenges heaped upon them by the outside world like that) in their own, unique way. The fact that magical objects had been stolen by European families rather than stay with their original cultures as well....we all know what this is about lol

The first half of the book, right up until the heist, was beautiful. I was warming up to everyone, things were fun but tense, I had no idea where we were headed and I was in for the ride. But then....

What I didn't like:

...then came the second half of the book (more or less; I don't remember the exact page numbers). Sadly, this was where the book lost me. I don't know if it was because I read it too fast (sometimes it happens, though rarely), if I just expected something completely different and was thus thrown off the game....I'm not sure. The latter half of the book feels incredibly rushed to me, with completely different objectives being woven into the narrative, with twists I didn't even see coming anywhere (and not in an entirely good way - I'm of the opinion that foreshadowed twists you can sense in the narrative but not fully realize until it's too late are the most beautiful thing an author can manage to do). And I just wasn't a big fan of it. Maybe it was also the seemingly random ways the characters came to conclusions (or was I too stupid to follow them? We will also never know)? I'm not sure. Anyway, I didn't like it and it sadly knocked my rating down a few notches.

Overall opinion: I enjoyed myself up until the later half which I just read through with increasing confusion. Emotional things left me pretty cold in the end, which is another sign for me that I didn't really enjoy myself.  I might pick later books in the series up to see if anything changes/if my own opinion changes again, but so far, we will leave it at: 
First half: 4 Stars
Second half: 2 Stars

I enjoyed this book, I really did! It's a beautiful, luster world it tosses us into; New Orleans in the 1870s and vampires?? How could I say no! And the cover is gorgeous as well,,,,

My main gripe with it is something that I have noticed in a few books I've read this year, which is the fact that relationships between characters feel very superficial to me - they are described by the author, they call each other "friend" and whatnot, but overall, I'm missing the why and how they became so close and such good friends. The book mentions sewing, beautiful clothes, and delicious food far more than it shows us scenes where characters bond over things in an extended fashion - and while I did get hungry reading those scenes (goal achieved, I suppose?), it left me craving the (in)human interactions I was waiting for...and then ultimately never got.

So if you want to pick this up to have fun, enjoy yourself and some Victorian-esque vampires, be my guest! You're going to enjoy yourself. But if you, like I, crave the deeper connections between people willing to betray someone they followed for their immortal life span, you might be a bit disappointed by this book.