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tachyondecay
A few months back, Netflix Canada acquired Agatha Christie’s Poirot, the ITV series starring David Suchet. Since then I’ve developed a tradition whereby most Sunday mornings I make an omelette for breakfast and sit back to watch an episode, occasionally tweeting mockery of the characters. I really enjoy Poirot: it is one of those series that so obviously loves its source material, with actors who are great at embodying their characters; yet, it isn’t afraid to take risks in its adaptations. I’m afraid this review is mostly an encomium for the series rather than a discussion of Poirot Investigates, because I just like the former better!
I’ve seen many of the dramatizations of the stories contained in Poirot Investigates, a few recently enough that I even remembered whodunnit! I was surprised to discover the extent to which the televised versions were altered from the original stories … but in pretty much every case, those alterations definitely improved the material. It’s with a heavy heart I admit that Christie’s versions just aren’t as memorable, exciting, creative, or fulfilling.
“The Million Dollar Bond Robbery”, a mere 11 pages in this book, is a good example of what I mean. The TV version adds a few characters and rewrites others (Inspector McNeill becomes the security chief of the bank, instead) and even deepens some of the characters (Philip gets a gambling habit and becomes a much more interesting, tempting suspect). Poirot and Hastings become more directly involved in the case, and all in all, the story is a lot more fun. It remains true to the general idea of the heist as Christie lays it out, but its elements are much more interesting.
This is not, I hasten to add, a fault of Christie’s in the sense that these stories are bad. Obviously Poirot remains a compelling character in order for him to be the subject of so many adaptations and for her books to remain popular. But as is often the case with prolific writers, not all of Christie’s stories are of the same quality. In particular, I think the Poirot novels have the upper hand over the shorts. There is just more space, more breathing room, to allow her to develop all the characters and create a satisfactory sense of mystery. These short stories rush everything. Naturally, when translated to a fifty to seventy minute adaptation on screen, the screenplay writers can take liberties to add depth.
So my advice, quite unusually, is not to read this book but to go watch the stories’ episodes on Poirot instead! You won’t regret it. As I’ve mentioned, the stories are just better. There is also so much care put into realizing the setting and weaving the sense of humour that makes Christie’s writing so enjoyable, juxtaposed as it is with the darker urges of human impulse. Morevoer, it’s amazing that Suchet & co. started portraying these characters in 1989, the year I was born, and kept plugging away at it until just three years ago! Now that is dedication.
Some books are important for what they are; others are more important for what they inspire. This is one of the latter.
I’ve seen many of the dramatizations of the stories contained in Poirot Investigates, a few recently enough that I even remembered whodunnit! I was surprised to discover the extent to which the televised versions were altered from the original stories … but in pretty much every case, those alterations definitely improved the material. It’s with a heavy heart I admit that Christie’s versions just aren’t as memorable, exciting, creative, or fulfilling.
“The Million Dollar Bond Robbery”, a mere 11 pages in this book, is a good example of what I mean. The TV version adds a few characters and rewrites others (Inspector McNeill becomes the security chief of the bank, instead) and even deepens some of the characters (Philip gets a gambling habit and becomes a much more interesting, tempting suspect). Poirot and Hastings become more directly involved in the case, and all in all, the story is a lot more fun. It remains true to the general idea of the heist as Christie lays it out, but its elements are much more interesting.
This is not, I hasten to add, a fault of Christie’s in the sense that these stories are bad. Obviously Poirot remains a compelling character in order for him to be the subject of so many adaptations and for her books to remain popular. But as is often the case with prolific writers, not all of Christie’s stories are of the same quality. In particular, I think the Poirot novels have the upper hand over the shorts. There is just more space, more breathing room, to allow her to develop all the characters and create a satisfactory sense of mystery. These short stories rush everything. Naturally, when translated to a fifty to seventy minute adaptation on screen, the screenplay writers can take liberties to add depth.
So my advice, quite unusually, is not to read this book but to go watch the stories’ episodes on Poirot instead! You won’t regret it. As I’ve mentioned, the stories are just better. There is also so much care put into realizing the setting and weaving the sense of humour that makes Christie’s writing so enjoyable, juxtaposed as it is with the darker urges of human impulse. Morevoer, it’s amazing that Suchet & co. started portraying these characters in 1989, the year I was born, and kept plugging away at it until just three years ago! Now that is dedication.
Some books are important for what they are; others are more important for what they inspire. This is one of the latter.
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My one-sentence review might be: if you liked Leviathan, then you’ll like Behemoth. It’s a worthy sequel that notably doesn’t suffer from the dreaded “middle book syndrome” of a trilogy. Once again Scott Westerfeld plays fast and loose with the events leading up to World War I, and it pays off with an intense story in which our two protagonists have to decide what to prioritize: their duties, or their friendship. It’s the same kind of YA story you see in so many other books, but instead of being set in the present day at a high school or a summer camp, we get it smack dab in the middle of an alternative steam/bio-punk Europe. Yes, please!
Deryn Sharp is back and once more nervously concealing her gender while being brilliant. This time around, she gets to help Alek with a revolution! Sort of. Leviathan ends up in Istanbul. Though ostensibly neutral, the Ottoman Empire is a hair’s breadth away from joining the Clanker side. With war officially declared, Deryn and Alek suddenly find themselves on opposite sides of a strange political situation. Alek and some of his men—sans Volger—escape the airship into the cosmopolitan Constantinople, but don’t worry: he and Deryn soon reunite, and there is a fun not-so-love-triangle.
I noted this in my review of Leviathan, but I had forgotten it (along with most of that book) and noticed it afresh in Behemoth: I love how Alek is not the greatest. By this I mean that he makes a lot of mistakes, and he often suggests courses of action that are not the best or lead to outright failure. It’s all too tempting for an author to make their protagonist awesome, if only because having a protagonist who keeps losing can often make a story fairly depressing and even boring. He is a natural-born leader, in the sense that he has a way with people and can get them to follow him on these schemes—he’s just not very good at strategy yet, because he is young and inexperienced.
Deryn is slightly more awesome, but she faces her share of setbacks too. Volger tries to manipulate her expertly—that doesn’t really go anywhere, unfortunately, and I’ll be interested to see if that gets revisited in book 3. I assume at some point her secret has to come out. In Behemoth we also get to see her with her first command (long story), and although she achieves her objective, it does not go … swimmingly (pun intended, I’ll go now). Although Deryn meets with a lot of success, Westerfeld deals her enough drama to keep the story interesting.
Above all else, we get the idea that Alek and Deryn are at their best when they are together. There is some romantic tension, of course, and a great deal of Deryn’s acknowledgement of blossoming (pesky) feelings for Alek. I love their little heart-to-heart when Alek thinks someone else has a crush on Deryn. It’s the kind of dramatic irony normally reserved for a Shakespeare comedy, and Westerfeld pulls it off brilliantly.
Once again Westerfeld puts Alek and Deryn in the thick of things without making it seem too unrealistic given their age and status. There is a good mixture of action scenes and more slower-paced, suspenseful moments. The conflict between what Deryn and Alek know is right and what they are expected to do for their countries or loyalties becomes even sharper. Istanbul is always an interesting and diverse setting, and that is no exception here in Behemoth. It is oversimplifying things to say that Deryn’s loyalty to Britain and its Air Service is “tested like never before”, to borrow a cliché, but she certainly does things that walk a fine line. I guess it helps that, ultimately, she does end up helping Leviathan, even if it is in very unorthodox ways.
Ultimately this is just another example of an excellent YA book from Scott Westerfeld. It’s fun and inventive and smart, with complicated main characters who can be both inspiring and insipid in turns. This is YA that entertains but also asks you to think, and it does so while elegantly fusing real history with unreal, imaginative inventions and ideas.
My reviews of the Leviathan trilogy:
← Leviathan
Deryn Sharp is back and once more nervously concealing her gender while being brilliant. This time around, she gets to help Alek with a revolution! Sort of. Leviathan ends up in Istanbul. Though ostensibly neutral, the Ottoman Empire is a hair’s breadth away from joining the Clanker side. With war officially declared, Deryn and Alek suddenly find themselves on opposite sides of a strange political situation. Alek and some of his men—sans Volger—escape the airship into the cosmopolitan Constantinople, but don’t worry: he and Deryn soon reunite, and there is a fun not-so-love-triangle.
I noted this in my review of Leviathan, but I had forgotten it (along with most of that book) and noticed it afresh in Behemoth: I love how Alek is not the greatest. By this I mean that he makes a lot of mistakes, and he often suggests courses of action that are not the best or lead to outright failure. It’s all too tempting for an author to make their protagonist awesome, if only because having a protagonist who keeps losing can often make a story fairly depressing and even boring. He is a natural-born leader, in the sense that he has a way with people and can get them to follow him on these schemes—he’s just not very good at strategy yet, because he is young and inexperienced.
Deryn is slightly more awesome, but she faces her share of setbacks too. Volger tries to manipulate her expertly—that doesn’t really go anywhere, unfortunately, and I’ll be interested to see if that gets revisited in book 3. I assume at some point her secret has to come out. In Behemoth we also get to see her with her first command (long story), and although she achieves her objective, it does not go … swimmingly (pun intended, I’ll go now). Although Deryn meets with a lot of success, Westerfeld deals her enough drama to keep the story interesting.
Above all else, we get the idea that Alek and Deryn are at their best when they are together. There is some romantic tension, of course, and a great deal of Deryn’s acknowledgement of blossoming (pesky) feelings for Alek. I love their little heart-to-heart when Alek thinks someone else has a crush on Deryn. It’s the kind of dramatic irony normally reserved for a Shakespeare comedy, and Westerfeld pulls it off brilliantly.
Once again Westerfeld puts Alek and Deryn in the thick of things without making it seem too unrealistic given their age and status. There is a good mixture of action scenes and more slower-paced, suspenseful moments. The conflict between what Deryn and Alek know is right and what they are expected to do for their countries or loyalties becomes even sharper. Istanbul is always an interesting and diverse setting, and that is no exception here in Behemoth. It is oversimplifying things to say that Deryn’s loyalty to Britain and its Air Service is “tested like never before”, to borrow a cliché, but she certainly does things that walk a fine line. I guess it helps that, ultimately, she does end up helping Leviathan, even if it is in very unorthodox ways.
Ultimately this is just another example of an excellent YA book from Scott Westerfeld. It’s fun and inventive and smart, with complicated main characters who can be both inspiring and insipid in turns. This is YA that entertains but also asks you to think, and it does so while elegantly fusing real history with unreal, imaginative inventions and ideas.
My reviews of the Leviathan trilogy:
← Leviathan
I have great respect for writers who can create entirely different worlds without succumbing to the need to explain every little detail of the world’s workings. Felix Gilman accomplishes this with The Half-Made World. His world is nothing like our own. There is the barest patina of the Wild West to it in the set dressings and costumes: frontier towns, guns and lawmakers, the looming spectre of industrialization, and disillusioned soldiers from a forlorn war. But this world has no connection to our own; it is as fantastic as any other high fantasy book, just more mechanistic in its setting. Gilman skilfully tells an adventure/chase story while touching on deep motifs, such as loyalty, one’s duty to history, and the ability for a single person to make a difference. It’s a half-made world, but it’s not a half-baked world.
(I’m so, so sorry.)
Gilman’s success at creating such a rich world and telling such a brilliant story is due in large part to the characters who carry its weight. He succeeds in that difficult task of portraying a cast whose goals are at odds with one another, yet every character is sympathetic in their own way. This puts the reader in the unenviable position of watching one or more of their “favourite” characters fail in some way. Not all of Lowry, Creedmoor, and Liv can succeed. But thanks to the way Gilman introduces and develops them, we develop a measure of sympathy for each.
Lowry is the closest thing The Half-Made World has to a human villain, and I’m almost tempted to say he’s an anti-villain. He believes in the order brought by the Line; that this belief is the result of indoctrination does not diminish its power to shape his actions. As the book’s chief representative of the Line, Lowry shows us the dark side of an industrialized, bureaucratized superpower. He is repeatedly compared to a cog in a machine: when his superiors expire from incompetence, he is promoted by inheriting their positions because he is “not significantly less adequate” for their task. The Line is all about depersonalizing and removing an individual’s sense of self or accomplishments. Lowry, despite his desire to be a good little Linesman, has a stubborn streak of pride that keeps him from staying under the radar. (Incidentally, this is the second book in a month where I’ve encountered the word “Linesman”, in entirely different uses!)
In contrast, Creedmoor is definitely an anti-hero. Dedicated to the more chaotic forces of the Gun, Creedmoor is not a nice man. He has killed and will kill again and will let innocents suffer. Yet his allegiance to the Gun and dedication to its irreconcilable animosity towards the Line is tenuous: he joined up because he was attracted to the power of the Gun, not its motives. Unlike the true believer that is Lowry, Creedmoor questions and chafes against the orders of his inhuman masters. He is Liv’s sometimes-ally, sometimes-enemy, helping and hindering as he sees fit. This provides for no end of entertaining conflict and contributes to the richness of the characterization here.
Liv Alverhuysen is the closest we come to a protagonist. She is of the unlikely variety, in that she does not set off to get involved in this war. It’s only by chance she ends up in a position to be kidnapped by Creedmoor along with the General, in whose precious but addled mind might lie the key to ending the war between the Gun and the Line, once and for all. Liv quickly proves her mettle though. She sets off from her cushy Ivory Tower with a friend, the cheerful but childlike Maggfrid, and in no time at all negotiates herself into the business side of a trader’s operation. Soon enough she arrives at the House Dolorous to work with mentally ill patients, which is where she meets Creedmoor and the General. As the three of them flee farther west into the unmade parts of the world, Liv’s even-tempered compassion is an essential counterweight to Creedmoor’s manic bouts of trigger-happiness and restlessness.
It’s this perfect balance between this trio of characters that makes me smile so much. The Half-Made World isn’t just an adventure story or a chase novel; it’s an adventure story and a chase novel with three viewpoints that all see the world in radically different terms, and by exposing us to those viewpoints, Gilman provides a more complete picture of that world. Liv’s naivety and aloofness when it comes to the Gun and the Line is a tonic for the embedded ideas of Creedmoor and Lowry’s that this war is inevitable and eternal. Similarly, Creedmoor’s anarchic tendency to buck his master’s commands and chafe at his mission parameters finds a parallel in Lowry’s decision to press forward, no matter the cost, in pursuit: both show traces of individuality and remind us that even when in thrall to inhuman forces, human free will is a powerful determining force all on its own.
The chase and its ultimate goal of uncovering the weapon hidden within (or pointed to by) the General’s mind proves somewhat of a MacGuffin. Its origins lie in the First Folk, Indigenous peoples analogues who are literally immortal and perhaps represent a midpoint between the inhuman demons behind the Guns and the Engines and the briefer, mortal humans ground down in this war. The First Folk regard humans, rightly so, as children (not that it’s our fault). Gilman does little to delve into the mystery behind the First Folk, and I’m ambivalent about that. On the one hand, I appreciate the kind of magical realism vibe that he is going for here. On the other hand, even though the First Folk are not explicitly Native Americans, their analogous resemblance means that this teeters dangerously close to another example of Indigenous cultures being Othered and their spiritual beliefs and practices exoticized for Western consumption.
As far as stories go, though, it is hard to beat the deadly effective combination of a fast-paced plot with a romantically dangerous world. The Gun and the Line are imposing forces wrestling to wrest control of human civilization from human hands. Liv and the other main characters suddenly find themselves at a pivot that could change everything. The stakes increase immeasurably, yet Gilman keeps everything grounded in the goals and motivations of his main characters. The result is something captivating and difficult to put down. I was left with a bit of a Harkaway feel, and not just because the book’s title is similar to The Gone-Away World, which also features a hefty dose of unmaking reality.
(I’m so, so sorry.)
Gilman’s success at creating such a rich world and telling such a brilliant story is due in large part to the characters who carry its weight. He succeeds in that difficult task of portraying a cast whose goals are at odds with one another, yet every character is sympathetic in their own way. This puts the reader in the unenviable position of watching one or more of their “favourite” characters fail in some way. Not all of Lowry, Creedmoor, and Liv can succeed. But thanks to the way Gilman introduces and develops them, we develop a measure of sympathy for each.
Lowry is the closest thing The Half-Made World has to a human villain, and I’m almost tempted to say he’s an anti-villain. He believes in the order brought by the Line; that this belief is the result of indoctrination does not diminish its power to shape his actions. As the book’s chief representative of the Line, Lowry shows us the dark side of an industrialized, bureaucratized superpower. He is repeatedly compared to a cog in a machine: when his superiors expire from incompetence, he is promoted by inheriting their positions because he is “not significantly less adequate” for their task. The Line is all about depersonalizing and removing an individual’s sense of self or accomplishments. Lowry, despite his desire to be a good little Linesman, has a stubborn streak of pride that keeps him from staying under the radar. (Incidentally, this is the second book in a month where I’ve encountered the word “Linesman”, in entirely different uses!)
In contrast, Creedmoor is definitely an anti-hero. Dedicated to the more chaotic forces of the Gun, Creedmoor is not a nice man. He has killed and will kill again and will let innocents suffer. Yet his allegiance to the Gun and dedication to its irreconcilable animosity towards the Line is tenuous: he joined up because he was attracted to the power of the Gun, not its motives. Unlike the true believer that is Lowry, Creedmoor questions and chafes against the orders of his inhuman masters. He is Liv’s sometimes-ally, sometimes-enemy, helping and hindering as he sees fit. This provides for no end of entertaining conflict and contributes to the richness of the characterization here.
Liv Alverhuysen is the closest we come to a protagonist. She is of the unlikely variety, in that she does not set off to get involved in this war. It’s only by chance she ends up in a position to be kidnapped by Creedmoor along with the General, in whose precious but addled mind might lie the key to ending the war between the Gun and the Line, once and for all. Liv quickly proves her mettle though. She sets off from her cushy Ivory Tower with a friend, the cheerful but childlike Maggfrid, and in no time at all negotiates herself into the business side of a trader’s operation. Soon enough she arrives at the House Dolorous to work with mentally ill patients, which is where she meets Creedmoor and the General. As the three of them flee farther west into the unmade parts of the world, Liv’s even-tempered compassion is an essential counterweight to Creedmoor’s manic bouts of trigger-happiness and restlessness.
It’s this perfect balance between this trio of characters that makes me smile so much. The Half-Made World isn’t just an adventure story or a chase novel; it’s an adventure story and a chase novel with three viewpoints that all see the world in radically different terms, and by exposing us to those viewpoints, Gilman provides a more complete picture of that world. Liv’s naivety and aloofness when it comes to the Gun and the Line is a tonic for the embedded ideas of Creedmoor and Lowry’s that this war is inevitable and eternal. Similarly, Creedmoor’s anarchic tendency to buck his master’s commands and chafe at his mission parameters finds a parallel in Lowry’s decision to press forward, no matter the cost, in pursuit: both show traces of individuality and remind us that even when in thrall to inhuman forces, human free will is a powerful determining force all on its own.
The chase and its ultimate goal of uncovering the weapon hidden within (or pointed to by) the General’s mind proves somewhat of a MacGuffin. Its origins lie in the First Folk, Indigenous peoples analogues who are literally immortal and perhaps represent a midpoint between the inhuman demons behind the Guns and the Engines and the briefer, mortal humans ground down in this war. The First Folk regard humans, rightly so, as children (not that it’s our fault). Gilman does little to delve into the mystery behind the First Folk, and I’m ambivalent about that. On the one hand, I appreciate the kind of magical realism vibe that he is going for here. On the other hand, even though the First Folk are not explicitly Native Americans, their analogous resemblance means that this teeters dangerously close to another example of Indigenous cultures being Othered and their spiritual beliefs and practices exoticized for Western consumption.
As far as stories go, though, it is hard to beat the deadly effective combination of a fast-paced plot with a romantically dangerous world. The Gun and the Line are imposing forces wrestling to wrest control of human civilization from human hands. Liv and the other main characters suddenly find themselves at a pivot that could change everything. The stakes increase immeasurably, yet Gilman keeps everything grounded in the goals and motivations of his main characters. The result is something captivating and difficult to put down. I was left with a bit of a Harkaway feel, and not just because the book’s title is similar to The Gone-Away World, which also features a hefty dose of unmaking reality.
I couldn’t stay away from the sequel to The Wrath & the Dawn, and my library was quick to enable me with The Rose & the Dagger. The love story of Shahrzad and Khalid and the war it has provoked come to a swift conclusion here. Hold on to your bookmarks, folks, because Renée Ahdieh is not slowing down this magic carpet ride, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
First off: you absolutely should read the first book before you read this one. They essentially form one large story—I don’t know if they were originally written that way and then split for publication reasons or whatever, but if you think you can pick up this book and grok the story, you’re wrong. While I’m going to avoid spoilers for The Rose & the Dagger here, there are spoilers for the first book. Read my spoiler-free review of the first book, linked above, if you need help to deciding whether to read this series sooner or later. Yes, those are your only two choices.
The Rose & the Dagger picks up quite literally where The Wrath & the Dawn leaves off. Khalid allowed his rival Tariq to essentially kidnap Shahrzad to keep her safe. That’s right: they are sworn enemies, the latter plotting an uprising against the former, but they conspire to get Shahrzad away from Rey “for her own good.” It’s so convoluted and I love it! Of course, as we established from the onset of the first book, Shahrzad is not some girl to be manipulated and damselled at the whims of mere men. She swiftly starts plotting not so much an escape as a resolution. She seeks out help and lays the groundwork for ridding Khalid of his curse and hopefully quelling the uprising before too many people get hurt.
One thing I love about this book and its main character is how Ahdieh portrays people crossing Shahrzad for a variety of reasons and conflicting goals and priorities. It’s not just a matter of people taking a dislike to her; many of her closest friends and family serve minor antagonistic roles in this story. These people act at cross-purposes with Shahrzad out of good intentions, or from misguided but very human flaws and emotions. For example, Reza has transferred his hatred for Khalid onto Shahrzad, and this informs every action he takes here. Tariq has yet to accept that Shahrzad and him are never going to be a thing, that she is in love with Khalid, and his struggle to do so forms an important character arc. Irsa vacillates between conspiring with Shahrzad and trying to protect her, again, “for her own good”. And, of course, Khalid is still learning that Shahrzad is not a thing to be sent away or protected: she is a calipha, a force to be reckoned with, an equal partner who can rule with him. All of these little examples combine into a rich tapestry of complexity.
Not all characters are created equal, of course, and there are a few who receive less development than one might like. Salim is a cartoonish villain. Yasmine and Despina, each variously ally and enemy to Shahrzad & co, seem to make their costume changes off the page, making it difficult to understand or believe the motivations behind such changes of heart. Rahim and Jalal, both of whom receive a fair amount of development in the first book, languish more here. (Rahim has his moments, of course, but he remains an ancillary character for all his newfound significance.)
Yet, much like its predecessor, The Rose & the Dagger is ultimately a story about stories. It is inevitable that some characters will be flatter than others. Khalid and Tariq talk about who the villain is of the story, and much of Shahrzad’s actions are framed around the idea that she wants to change the narrative into which they have all been cast against their will. The book concludes with Shahrzad starting yet another of her stories, a reminder that even when one story ends, another can always begin right after it. The parallels are about as clear as Ahdieh can draw them without making the book metafictional. And this works very well for me, because when I read I like to mentally disassemble stories and turn their moving parts over in my mind to see how they work. Ahdieh’s careful craftsmanship here is like getting to watch an intricate machine whose works are visible and even enhance its overall form: you can enjoy watching it function even as you observe its mechanism of functioning. There is just something so delectable about a very deliberately-crafted, finely-tuned story.
The true fine-tuning, though, isn’t in the characters but in the plot. As I mentioned earlier, this is a fast-paced book. Ahdieh is trying to resolve a lot in a short amount of time. This is where that craftsmanship is so important. That magic carpet is genius. Shahrzad can cover vast distances in short periods of time, but it’s not a magic bullet that gets her out of every scrape. I’m so used to epic fantasy series where it takes books upon books for things to happen, but Ahdieh has none of that. For example, I was expecting the breaking of Khalid’s curse to form the climax of the book. This proves to be a red herring, however, with an entirely different chain of events forming the third act—and I love it when a book surprises me like that. The only thing better than the satisfaction of watching my expectations fulfilled is when a book takes those expectations, acknowledges they existed, and then tosses them away and gives me something even better.
The showdown between Khalid and Shahrzad on one side and Salim on the other is so excellent. It’s a thorny problem, because the former two are so invested in finding a peaceful or less-bloody resolution to the matter. They have the ability to beat Salim, but they want to defeat him through cunning rather than force. I love it. Moreover, it’s an even more compelling conflict than the need to remove Khalid’s curse, because it allows Ahdieh to show that Khalid and Shahrzad’s love is good not just for them but for the entirety of Khorasan. Finally, it’s a perfect thematic climax to Ahdieh’s Mad Max-echoing message that women are not things:
Yeah, I did a fist-pump when I read that. It’s such a great exchange. It wasn’t long ago that Tariq himself viewed Shahrzad as a thing: a heart to possess, a woman to hold and keep with him. Sure, he might have admired her opinionated mind or her willingness to speak it, but he acted toward her as one acts towards something one wants to capture and have. This is a pivot for him, then, a measure of how far he he has come, another example of the book rejecting the idea that women should be damsels. Ahdieh empowers all of the women in this book in varying ways, validating everything from love to a desire for power and prestige.
The Wrath & the Dawn was a powerful and exciting opening note, but The Rose & the Dagger feels like it contains the bulk of Ahdieh’s storytelling symphony. I read this in a single day. I didn’t intend to; I had other things to do and was only planning to read half-way. But I could not put this down. I needed to keep going, to find out what would happen next, to see Shahrzad and Irsa and Khalid and Tariq keep growing and changing and fucking up and making amends and kicking ass over and over again. Some books and series are a slow burn that take chapters and entire volumes to grow on you before finally paying off. This is not one of those. The Rose & the Dagger is a stunning and satisfying conclusion to the story begun in the first book, and my only regret from reading it so fast is that it is over now.
First off: you absolutely should read the first book before you read this one. They essentially form one large story—I don’t know if they were originally written that way and then split for publication reasons or whatever, but if you think you can pick up this book and grok the story, you’re wrong. While I’m going to avoid spoilers for The Rose & the Dagger here, there are spoilers for the first book. Read my spoiler-free review of the first book, linked above, if you need help to deciding whether to read this series sooner or later. Yes, those are your only two choices.
The Rose & the Dagger picks up quite literally where The Wrath & the Dawn leaves off. Khalid allowed his rival Tariq to essentially kidnap Shahrzad to keep her safe. That’s right: they are sworn enemies, the latter plotting an uprising against the former, but they conspire to get Shahrzad away from Rey “for her own good.” It’s so convoluted and I love it! Of course, as we established from the onset of the first book, Shahrzad is not some girl to be manipulated and damselled at the whims of mere men. She swiftly starts plotting not so much an escape as a resolution. She seeks out help and lays the groundwork for ridding Khalid of his curse and hopefully quelling the uprising before too many people get hurt.
One thing I love about this book and its main character is how Ahdieh portrays people crossing Shahrzad for a variety of reasons and conflicting goals and priorities. It’s not just a matter of people taking a dislike to her; many of her closest friends and family serve minor antagonistic roles in this story. These people act at cross-purposes with Shahrzad out of good intentions, or from misguided but very human flaws and emotions. For example, Reza has transferred his hatred for Khalid onto Shahrzad, and this informs every action he takes here. Tariq has yet to accept that Shahrzad and him are never going to be a thing, that she is in love with Khalid, and his struggle to do so forms an important character arc. Irsa vacillates between conspiring with Shahrzad and trying to protect her, again, “for her own good”. And, of course, Khalid is still learning that Shahrzad is not a thing to be sent away or protected: she is a calipha, a force to be reckoned with, an equal partner who can rule with him. All of these little examples combine into a rich tapestry of complexity.
Not all characters are created equal, of course, and there are a few who receive less development than one might like. Salim is a cartoonish villain. Yasmine and Despina, each variously ally and enemy to Shahrzad & co, seem to make their costume changes off the page, making it difficult to understand or believe the motivations behind such changes of heart. Rahim and Jalal, both of whom receive a fair amount of development in the first book, languish more here. (Rahim has his moments, of course, but he remains an ancillary character for all his newfound significance.)
Yet, much like its predecessor, The Rose & the Dagger is ultimately a story about stories. It is inevitable that some characters will be flatter than others. Khalid and Tariq talk about who the villain is of the story, and much of Shahrzad’s actions are framed around the idea that she wants to change the narrative into which they have all been cast against their will. The book concludes with Shahrzad starting yet another of her stories, a reminder that even when one story ends, another can always begin right after it. The parallels are about as clear as Ahdieh can draw them without making the book metafictional. And this works very well for me, because when I read I like to mentally disassemble stories and turn their moving parts over in my mind to see how they work. Ahdieh’s careful craftsmanship here is like getting to watch an intricate machine whose works are visible and even enhance its overall form: you can enjoy watching it function even as you observe its mechanism of functioning. There is just something so delectable about a very deliberately-crafted, finely-tuned story.
The true fine-tuning, though, isn’t in the characters but in the plot. As I mentioned earlier, this is a fast-paced book. Ahdieh is trying to resolve a lot in a short amount of time. This is where that craftsmanship is so important. That magic carpet is genius. Shahrzad can cover vast distances in short periods of time, but it’s not a magic bullet that gets her out of every scrape. I’m so used to epic fantasy series where it takes books upon books for things to happen, but Ahdieh has none of that. For example, I was expecting the breaking of Khalid’s curse to form the climax of the book. This proves to be a red herring, however, with an entirely different chain of events forming the third act—and I love it when a book surprises me like that. The only thing better than the satisfaction of watching my expectations fulfilled is when a book takes those expectations, acknowledges they existed, and then tosses them away and gives me something even better.
The showdown between Khalid and Shahrzad on one side and Salim on the other is so excellent. It’s a thorny problem, because the former two are so invested in finding a peaceful or less-bloody resolution to the matter. They have the ability to beat Salim, but they want to defeat him through cunning rather than force. I love it. Moreover, it’s an even more compelling conflict than the need to remove Khalid’s curse, because it allows Ahdieh to show that Khalid and Shahrzad’s love is good not just for them but for the entirety of Khorasan. Finally, it’s a perfect thematic climax to Ahdieh’s Mad Max-echoing message that women are not things:
“I will not play these games with you, Salim. Where is she?”
Another smug smile. “Have you lost something of import, nephew?”
At that, Tariq took a step forward. The captain of the guard lifted a hand to stop him.
“I have not lost a thing, Salim Ali el-Sharif….”
Yeah, I did a fist-pump when I read that. It’s such a great exchange. It wasn’t long ago that Tariq himself viewed Shahrzad as a thing: a heart to possess, a woman to hold and keep with him. Sure, he might have admired her opinionated mind or her willingness to speak it, but he acted toward her as one acts towards something one wants to capture and have. This is a pivot for him, then, a measure of how far he he has come, another example of the book rejecting the idea that women should be damsels. Ahdieh empowers all of the women in this book in varying ways, validating everything from love to a desire for power and prestige.
The Wrath & the Dawn was a powerful and exciting opening note, but The Rose & the Dagger feels like it contains the bulk of Ahdieh’s storytelling symphony. I read this in a single day. I didn’t intend to; I had other things to do and was only planning to read half-way. But I could not put this down. I needed to keep going, to find out what would happen next, to see Shahrzad and Irsa and Khalid and Tariq keep growing and changing and fucking up and making amends and kicking ass over and over again. Some books and series are a slow burn that take chapters and entire volumes to grow on you before finally paying off. This is not one of those. The Rose & the Dagger is a stunning and satisfying conclusion to the story begun in the first book, and my only regret from reading it so fast is that it is over now.
Extracted was originally published a few years ago, but this edition is apparently “expanded” and contains “bonus material”. I don’t know about that, but I do know that I had never heard of this series until now, and that makes me sad. I’m glad that I got a copy of this to review through NetGalley, because Sherry D. Ficklin and Tyler Jolley have written some fun and original time travel here.
The setup is easy to explain and quite exciting: the two protagonists belong to two competing factions of time travellers. Does that not sound intriguing? The book alternates between their viewpoints, so we get to see Ember’s training as part of the technologically-advanced Tesla Institute and Lex’s fun times as part of the grittier Hollows. To up the stakes, your first time travel journey wipes away most of your long-term memories, giving you a suspiciously clean slate. As Ember and Lex’s timelines converge, their past identities become important while all hell breaks loose.
The idea of competing time travel factions is brilliant. I picture the Tesla Institute as being brightly lit, chrome and white, while the Hollows’ Wardenclyffe Tower is much dingier and dirtier. We see rival time travellers on occasion, of course, but Ficklin and Jolley have distilled the idea down into a simple, eminently workable concept. I love the somewhat divergent philosophies of the two groups, with the Teslas’ reliance on a technological Tether to “rift” through the time-stream while the Hollows use biologically-produced “Contra” pills to rift. More importantly, Ficklin and Jolley pull of the tight-rope walk of not making either faction seem superior in terms of ideology.
For the first half of the book or so, we get to see both approaches to time travel. We hear Ember and the Teslas criticize the irresponsibility of the Hollows while Lex and his buddies put down the Teslas. Of course, one can’t help but wonder if the truth of the matter is somewhere in between the two stories … but Ficklin and Jolley don’t rush us to this crisis. We get to see a sufficient amount of time travel first, enough to establish ground rules without too much exposition.
Time travel stories often go wrong by trying to exploit the mechanics of time travel in a mind-bendy way but then failing to live up to its expectations. Ficklin and Jolley walk another fine line here, but I think they succeed. Extracted is full of predestination paradoxes and information loops and other timey-wimey goodness, but at the end, it all makes sense. Well, as much sense as any time travel story can.
While time travel becomes a vehicle for conflict, and helps create that conflict, this is still ultimately a story about humans and human relationships. You might think, this being YA, that Ember and Lex are destined to fall in lurrrrve, maybe with a lurrrrve triangle sneaking in somewhere there. I don’t want to spoil it; I’ll just say the truth is more complex than that. I love how Extracted continuously and consistently raises the stakes and has characters adapt to the situation at hand: enemies become allies as the situation dictates, even if there is reluctance on both sides. I like that everyone has a part to play, but that not everyone plays the same part. Kara and Ethan are a great example like this: they are both forced to choose between their loyalty to Ember as a friend and their loyalty to Tesla. They make different choices, consistent with their characters. As situations change and the characters learn new information, their loyalties, alliances, and choices change accordingly, even as they seek to achieve their unchanging goals.
It’s a little bit selfish of Lex to risk a universe-destroying paradox just to save someone he loves, but hey, if Superman can do it for Lois Lane, I guess Lex gets one.
(No, Lex is not secretly Lex Luthor. You get that spoiler for free.)
If I have any complaint or critique, it’s merely that parts of this book are not as deep as I’d like. One of the early scenes, where we first see Lex and the rest of the Hollows at their hideout, gave me serious PTSD flashbacks to Shadowhunters and its secret facility. I kept picturing Lex and Stein in terrible fake leather outfits play fighting before they go off to clubs (because young people all hang out in clubs and wear fake leather like a network TV ripoff of Blade, right?). The impromptu fight/training sequence between those two felt a little too much like an attempt to establish Extracted as a “cool” and “hip” action book. Similarly, there is a very awkward name-drop that foreshadows Ember and Lex’s connected identities. For a book so deeply connected to the Lost Imperials and a specific moment in history, Ficklin and Jolley do little to explore that connection beyond that single scene and a few other throwaway bits of exposition.
I guess one of the benefits of republication is that I don’t have to wait to read the next books in the series! Extracted is everything I look for in a good time travel novel, so I look forward to tracking down the next books and continuing the story of the fight between Teslas, Hollows, and whatever else lurks out there in the time-stream.
(Just a note, more for my sake than anyone else’s, but this is my 100th finished book of 2016!)
The setup is easy to explain and quite exciting: the two protagonists belong to two competing factions of time travellers. Does that not sound intriguing? The book alternates between their viewpoints, so we get to see Ember’s training as part of the technologically-advanced Tesla Institute and Lex’s fun times as part of the grittier Hollows. To up the stakes, your first time travel journey wipes away most of your long-term memories, giving you a suspiciously clean slate. As Ember and Lex’s timelines converge, their past identities become important while all hell breaks loose.
The idea of competing time travel factions is brilliant. I picture the Tesla Institute as being brightly lit, chrome and white, while the Hollows’ Wardenclyffe Tower is much dingier and dirtier. We see rival time travellers on occasion, of course, but Ficklin and Jolley have distilled the idea down into a simple, eminently workable concept. I love the somewhat divergent philosophies of the two groups, with the Teslas’ reliance on a technological Tether to “rift” through the time-stream while the Hollows use biologically-produced “Contra” pills to rift. More importantly, Ficklin and Jolley pull of the tight-rope walk of not making either faction seem superior in terms of ideology.
For the first half of the book or so, we get to see both approaches to time travel. We hear Ember and the Teslas criticize the irresponsibility of the Hollows while Lex and his buddies put down the Teslas. Of course, one can’t help but wonder if the truth of the matter is somewhere in between the two stories … but Ficklin and Jolley don’t rush us to this crisis. We get to see a sufficient amount of time travel first, enough to establish ground rules without too much exposition.
Time travel stories often go wrong by trying to exploit the mechanics of time travel in a mind-bendy way but then failing to live up to its expectations. Ficklin and Jolley walk another fine line here, but I think they succeed. Extracted is full of predestination paradoxes and information loops and other timey-wimey goodness, but at the end, it all makes sense. Well, as much sense as any time travel story can.
While time travel becomes a vehicle for conflict, and helps create that conflict, this is still ultimately a story about humans and human relationships. You might think, this being YA, that Ember and Lex are destined to fall in lurrrrve, maybe with a lurrrrve triangle sneaking in somewhere there. I don’t want to spoil it; I’ll just say the truth is more complex than that. I love how Extracted continuously and consistently raises the stakes and has characters adapt to the situation at hand: enemies become allies as the situation dictates, even if there is reluctance on both sides. I like that everyone has a part to play, but that not everyone plays the same part. Kara and Ethan are a great example like this: they are both forced to choose between their loyalty to Ember as a friend and their loyalty to Tesla. They make different choices, consistent with their characters. As situations change and the characters learn new information, their loyalties, alliances, and choices change accordingly, even as they seek to achieve their unchanging goals.
It’s a little bit selfish of Lex to risk a universe-destroying paradox just to save someone he loves, but hey, if Superman can do it for Lois Lane, I guess Lex gets one.
(No, Lex is not secretly Lex Luthor. You get that spoiler for free.)
If I have any complaint or critique, it’s merely that parts of this book are not as deep as I’d like. One of the early scenes, where we first see Lex and the rest of the Hollows at their hideout, gave me serious PTSD flashbacks to Shadowhunters and its secret facility. I kept picturing Lex and Stein in terrible fake leather outfits play fighting before they go off to clubs (because young people all hang out in clubs and wear fake leather like a network TV ripoff of Blade, right?). The impromptu fight/training sequence between those two felt a little too much like an attempt to establish Extracted as a “cool” and “hip” action book. Similarly, there is a very awkward name-drop that foreshadows Ember and Lex’s connected identities. For a book so deeply connected to the Lost Imperials and a specific moment in history, Ficklin and Jolley do little to explore that connection beyond that single scene and a few other throwaway bits of exposition.
I guess one of the benefits of republication is that I don’t have to wait to read the next books in the series! Extracted is everything I look for in a good time travel novel, so I look forward to tracking down the next books and continuing the story of the fight between Teslas, Hollows, and whatever else lurks out there in the time-stream.
(Just a note, more for my sake than anyone else’s, but this is my 100th finished book of 2016!)
Oh, the ambivalence! Two books in a row where I’m not fond of the structure. Unlike Adult Onset, however, I actually did like The Truth About Alice. Jennifer Mathieu’s idea to use four viewpoint characters to essentially gossip to us about Alice Franklin is a good one. I wish that I had liked it more, but the characters didn’t really grow on me, and the ending is underwhelming.
Alice Franklin might or might not be a slut. But who cares, right? Well Healy “Stereotypical Conservative Small Town” Texas cares. Oh, and thanks to the rumour mill, Alice is on the hook for “causing” the car crash that claimed the life of Brandon, Healy quarterback. So she’s basically a pariah. Mathieu explores these events through four people involved in various ways: Elaine, who threw the party where Alice earned her ultimate slut title; Kelsie, Alice’s former best friend who throws her under the bus in a big way; Josh, Brandon’s best friend; and Kurt, super-smart and therefore largely outside of Healy High’s social hierarchy, but he has pined after Alice throughout high school and now he sees a chance to swoop in and be the friend she needs.
Mathieu takes pains to make each narrator’s voice distinct and believably adolescent in cadence and vocabulary. I’m no longer in the privileged position to comment on whether these voices ring true. I like the attempt. There are times, however, when this device gets in the way—Kelsie’s constant allusion to “That Really Awful Stuff” is an example. In attempting to explore the various niches and socialized behaviours of teenagers, Mathieu occasionally verges upon the uncanny valley of characterization: Elaine is too much the popular girl; Kelsie is too much the follower; Josh is too much the confused jock; Kurt is too much the awkward outsider, etc. This retreat into archetypes, while not necessarily bad, does make the book feel a little more obvious and heavy-handed to me—much like the not-so-subtle reference to The Scarlet Letter in one chapter.
This narrative of rumours and innuendo is powerful. It elevates The Truth About Alice beyond merely a story about Alice, because it is Elaine’s and Kelsie’s and Josh’s and Kurt’s story too. We learn about Elaine’s frustration with her mother’s Weight Watchers obsession and the pressures that have moulded her into the perfect pretty popular girl of Healy. Kelsie confesses to us, unburdening herself of all her insecurities and the truth behind what happened between her and Tommy Cray—That Really Awful Stuff, which if you’re not brain dead, you’ll figure out long before she spills the beans. Josh is interesting: at first he simply appears to be your average bro-jock (or is it jock-bro?). Then, as he recounts his memories with Brandon, we see other facets of Josh. Compared to these three, Kurt’s development is a little disappointing, just because it’s so on-the-nose for his archetype: he’s that nerd with a heart of gold who has to learn that real-life Alice isn’t as perfect as his fantasy Alice, but hey, that’s OK. He’s not quite as interesting as the other three. Taken all together, though, these narrators allow Mathieu to explore many more ramifications of gossip and small-town mentalities.
I don’t like that this structure by its very nature diminishes Alice’s own role in her story. We don’t really get to meet Alice until she has the final word, which means the impact of those words isn’t very powerful. While Alice’s chapter serves to resolve the story, it can really only offer us trite concluding remarks, because we don’t know the real Alice well enough.
And this is the truth about The Truth About Alice: for all the things it does right, I’m not sure it does any one thing better than any of the innumerable other novels that talk about these issues. We’ve seen into the minds of the popular and pseudo-popular girls time and again; we’ve deconstructed the jock-bro and the golden nerd and the small town. The book’s ending doesn’t offer any new insights, and it is eminently predictable.
So I guess I’m totally on board with Mathieu’s message, even if I’m not completely won over by the medium. I like that it’s only 200 pages; it manages to cover a lot of ground in that time—I just wish more of it were new ground. As it is, The Truth About Alice is a good look at slut-shaming and the policing of gender roles in and by teenagers, but it hasn’t wowed me like some other entries in this sub-genre.
Alice Franklin might or might not be a slut. But who cares, right? Well Healy “Stereotypical Conservative Small Town” Texas cares. Oh, and thanks to the rumour mill, Alice is on the hook for “causing” the car crash that claimed the life of Brandon, Healy quarterback. So she’s basically a pariah. Mathieu explores these events through four people involved in various ways: Elaine, who threw the party where Alice earned her ultimate slut title; Kelsie, Alice’s former best friend who throws her under the bus in a big way; Josh, Brandon’s best friend; and Kurt, super-smart and therefore largely outside of Healy High’s social hierarchy, but he has pined after Alice throughout high school and now he sees a chance to swoop in and be the friend she needs.
Mathieu takes pains to make each narrator’s voice distinct and believably adolescent in cadence and vocabulary. I’m no longer in the privileged position to comment on whether these voices ring true. I like the attempt. There are times, however, when this device gets in the way—Kelsie’s constant allusion to “That Really Awful Stuff” is an example. In attempting to explore the various niches and socialized behaviours of teenagers, Mathieu occasionally verges upon the uncanny valley of characterization: Elaine is too much the popular girl; Kelsie is too much the follower; Josh is too much the confused jock; Kurt is too much the awkward outsider, etc. This retreat into archetypes, while not necessarily bad, does make the book feel a little more obvious and heavy-handed to me—much like the not-so-subtle reference to The Scarlet Letter in one chapter.
This narrative of rumours and innuendo is powerful. It elevates The Truth About Alice beyond merely a story about Alice, because it is Elaine’s and Kelsie’s and Josh’s and Kurt’s story too. We learn about Elaine’s frustration with her mother’s Weight Watchers obsession and the pressures that have moulded her into the perfect pretty popular girl of Healy. Kelsie confesses to us, unburdening herself of all her insecurities and the truth behind what happened between her and Tommy Cray—That Really Awful Stuff, which if you’re not brain dead, you’ll figure out long before she spills the beans. Josh is interesting: at first he simply appears to be your average bro-jock (or is it jock-bro?). Then, as he recounts his memories with Brandon, we see other facets of Josh. Compared to these three, Kurt’s development is a little disappointing, just because it’s so on-the-nose for his archetype: he’s that nerd with a heart of gold who has to learn that real-life Alice isn’t as perfect as his fantasy Alice, but hey, that’s OK. He’s not quite as interesting as the other three. Taken all together, though, these narrators allow Mathieu to explore many more ramifications of gossip and small-town mentalities.
I don’t like that this structure by its very nature diminishes Alice’s own role in her story. We don’t really get to meet Alice until she has the final word, which means the impact of those words isn’t very powerful. While Alice’s chapter serves to resolve the story, it can really only offer us trite concluding remarks, because we don’t know the real Alice well enough.
And this is the truth about The Truth About Alice: for all the things it does right, I’m not sure it does any one thing better than any of the innumerable other novels that talk about these issues. We’ve seen into the minds of the popular and pseudo-popular girls time and again; we’ve deconstructed the jock-bro and the golden nerd and the small town. The book’s ending doesn’t offer any new insights, and it is eminently predictable.
So I guess I’m totally on board with Mathieu’s message, even if I’m not completely won over by the medium. I like that it’s only 200 pages; it manages to cover a lot of ground in that time—I just wish more of it were new ground. As it is, The Truth About Alice is a good look at slut-shaming and the policing of gender roles in and by teenagers, but it hasn’t wowed me like some other entries in this sub-genre.
Back when this came I know there was a lot of hullabaloo about whether or not it was fantasy, and whether or not Kazuo Ishiguro wanted it to be seen as fantasy or liked fantasy or whatever. It’s true that Ishiguro, much like Margaret Atwood, has a certain literary cachet that allows his books to escape genre ghettoing—Never Let Me Go is science fiction like it or not, not that I’m going to spoil it for you if you haven’t read it and therefore don’t know why it’s SF—and The Buried Giant is fantasy. But that seems beside the point. I’m not going to compare this book to Ishiguro’s other novels, because part of his style is that each novel is a very separate entity. He doesn’t write in one particular genre, setting, or form. Nevertheless, I’m ambivalent about this one, guys.
Atwood is an appropriate comparison, because I’m reminded of some of my earlier attempts to read her novels, such as The Blind Assassin. I could see a good story in there and appreciate the quality of the writing, but stylistically it didn’t dovetail with my preferences. The Buried Giant is much the same. Ishiguro’s post-Arthurian quest epic distilled into a story about an old married couple trying to get to the next village is simultaneously a brilliant novel and also a little bit boring. Axl and Beatrice are such unassuming characters you’d be forgiven for your mind wandering to whether or not you remembered to put the trash cans out or turn off that light switch before you left for work. Yet that is entirely the point.
I like the over-arching mystery of the memory mist. Ishiguro exploits it effectively to manipulate both the pace and substance of the narrative. Not only are Axl and Beatrice mutable characters, but the third-person narrative is themselves unreliable to an extent, and that makes for interesting storytelling. The mist’s in-universe explanation is a clever twist on the nature and abilities of mythological creatures. And it provides an effective bridge between Axl and Beatrice’s journey to their son’s village and Gawain/Wistan’s duties regarding Querig the dragon.
When the story begins, it isn’t immediately obvious how Ishiguro is going to stretch it into 300-some pages. Their son’s village is ostensibly two or three days’ walk away. The inevitable sidetracking is gradual, as more and more events pile up to foil Axl and Beatrice’s resolve to complete their simple goal. It’s seldom a matter of people stopping them from proceeding (though it happens once or twice) but simply that something slightly more important arises. These distractions punctuate their journey and transform it into a far more important quest.
The post-Arthurian country and its nascent conflict between Britons and Saxons provide an interesting pseudo-historical/semi-mythological setting. Wistan, a Saxon warrior living outside of the British Isles, embodies this dynamic: he gets along well enough with Britons Beatrice and Axl, yet he exhorts and demands that the Saxon boy they befriend, Edwin, grow up hating all Britons. When everyone learns the true origin and purpose of the mist, this underscores a theme that conflict is inevitable, and that preventing it is preferable but ultimately doomed to failure. Wistan and Axl represent competing ideas in a Hobbes/Locke vein: one believes the war should happen sooner rather than later; the other hopes that cooler heads might yet prevail.
The Buried Giant is not a historical retelling of the Saxon conquest of Britain. It’s not a Bernard Cornwell novel that gets down and dirty with the inhabitants of a fractious country often at war with itself as much as it is with its neighbours. This is a kind of colonization of the history of the most colonizing nation on Earth, if you can appreciate that irony. Ishiguro borrows the very real cultural and political conflict between the Saxons and Britons and turns it to mythological and literary ends. I mean, ultimately the history of that time and the historicity of King Arthur is so muddled that there is plenty of room in this sandbox. But I think this is one of the ways in which this novel feels confused about its identity. It references Arthurian legend, borrows Gawain and name-checks a handful of other Knights and Merlin, just as it references Saxons/Britons. Beyond these trappings, however, this novel feels very generic, like it could have taken place anywhere.
Although larger issues of sovereignty and nationhood and loyalty make their appearance, the novel comes down to the love between two people. Ishiguro asks whether a couple’s love can be strong enough to withstand the tests of time and depredations of memory. I’m surprised that I like the ending, which is rather ambiguous, because there was a large chunk in the middle of the novel where I was not interested in what was going on. But after we resolve the dragon and mist stories, the conclusion to Axl and Beatrice’s journey is endearing. The uncertainty of the ending might feel frustratingly postmodern, but it’s an appropriate send-off for everything else in this novel.
Oddly enough perhaps the best thing I can say about The Buried Giant is that it has suddenly given me a craving to re-read Bridge of Birds? I think it’s the similarities in its vague pseudo-historical setting and quest-like buddy protagonist structure. Also having just looked up that book I’ve been reminded that there are two sequels, which I would probably be better off ignoring because they’re sure not to be as sublime as the first. But anyway, that’s my take: reminded me to read a novel from six years ago that I loved a lot.
Atwood is an appropriate comparison, because I’m reminded of some of my earlier attempts to read her novels, such as The Blind Assassin. I could see a good story in there and appreciate the quality of the writing, but stylistically it didn’t dovetail with my preferences. The Buried Giant is much the same. Ishiguro’s post-Arthurian quest epic distilled into a story about an old married couple trying to get to the next village is simultaneously a brilliant novel and also a little bit boring. Axl and Beatrice are such unassuming characters you’d be forgiven for your mind wandering to whether or not you remembered to put the trash cans out or turn off that light switch before you left for work. Yet that is entirely the point.
I like the over-arching mystery of the memory mist. Ishiguro exploits it effectively to manipulate both the pace and substance of the narrative. Not only are Axl and Beatrice mutable characters, but the third-person narrative is themselves unreliable to an extent, and that makes for interesting storytelling. The mist’s in-universe explanation is a clever twist on the nature and abilities of mythological creatures. And it provides an effective bridge between Axl and Beatrice’s journey to their son’s village and Gawain/Wistan’s duties regarding Querig the dragon.
When the story begins, it isn’t immediately obvious how Ishiguro is going to stretch it into 300-some pages. Their son’s village is ostensibly two or three days’ walk away. The inevitable sidetracking is gradual, as more and more events pile up to foil Axl and Beatrice’s resolve to complete their simple goal. It’s seldom a matter of people stopping them from proceeding (though it happens once or twice) but simply that something slightly more important arises. These distractions punctuate their journey and transform it into a far more important quest.
The post-Arthurian country and its nascent conflict between Britons and Saxons provide an interesting pseudo-historical/semi-mythological setting. Wistan, a Saxon warrior living outside of the British Isles, embodies this dynamic: he gets along well enough with Britons Beatrice and Axl, yet he exhorts and demands that the Saxon boy they befriend, Edwin, grow up hating all Britons. When everyone learns the true origin and purpose of the mist, this underscores a theme that conflict is inevitable, and that preventing it is preferable but ultimately doomed to failure. Wistan and Axl represent competing ideas in a Hobbes/Locke vein: one believes the war should happen sooner rather than later; the other hopes that cooler heads might yet prevail.
The Buried Giant is not a historical retelling of the Saxon conquest of Britain. It’s not a Bernard Cornwell novel that gets down and dirty with the inhabitants of a fractious country often at war with itself as much as it is with its neighbours. This is a kind of colonization of the history of the most colonizing nation on Earth, if you can appreciate that irony. Ishiguro borrows the very real cultural and political conflict between the Saxons and Britons and turns it to mythological and literary ends. I mean, ultimately the history of that time and the historicity of King Arthur is so muddled that there is plenty of room in this sandbox. But I think this is one of the ways in which this novel feels confused about its identity. It references Arthurian legend, borrows Gawain and name-checks a handful of other Knights and Merlin, just as it references Saxons/Britons. Beyond these trappings, however, this novel feels very generic, like it could have taken place anywhere.
Although larger issues of sovereignty and nationhood and loyalty make their appearance, the novel comes down to the love between two people. Ishiguro asks whether a couple’s love can be strong enough to withstand the tests of time and depredations of memory. I’m surprised that I like the ending, which is rather ambiguous, because there was a large chunk in the middle of the novel where I was not interested in what was going on. But after we resolve the dragon and mist stories, the conclusion to Axl and Beatrice’s journey is endearing. The uncertainty of the ending might feel frustratingly postmodern, but it’s an appropriate send-off for everything else in this novel.
Oddly enough perhaps the best thing I can say about The Buried Giant is that it has suddenly given me a craving to re-read Bridge of Birds? I think it’s the similarities in its vague pseudo-historical setting and quest-like buddy protagonist structure. Also having just looked up that book I’ve been reminded that there are two sequels, which I would probably be better off ignoring because they’re sure not to be as sublime as the first. But anyway, that’s my take: reminded me to read a novel from six years ago that I loved a lot.
Long have I regarded the economy as a fickle, fictitious construct of humanity. If we disappeared, it would disappear (although its effects on the environment would remain). However, that's a very naive view to take, and not a particularly helpful one. So I set out to learn more about the economy the way we're told to learn about things in school: begin at the beginning. The Ascent of Money is an attempt to recount the wise of finance, beginning in Mesopotamia and ending in modern-day United States and Britain.
As I began reading, I reacted with scorn to Niall Ferguson's intense introduction, thinking that this would be another one of those books where the author takes his pet thesis and tries to show that it is the real reason behind everything that's happened in history. Fortunately, Ferguson toned down the rhetoric after the introduction and instead focused on imparting and interpreting the facts.
The book follows a roughly chronological path, but only because Ferguson tackles components of the economy in increasingly complex order. Each chapter is about some specific aspect of finances, such as the bond market, the stock market, mortgages, etc. Hence, Ferguson treads over the same historical periods several times, but each time with fresh eyes. I enjoyed this categorization scheme, and I think it worked better than a strict chronological organization would have. Above all, it helped stress the interdependence of these various components; they did not arise in a vacuum and they are still closely-linked today.
My favourite part of The Ascent of Money concerns the financial history of the Renaissance. Ferguson mentions the rise of the Medicis, explaining how their decentralized approach to banking protected them from the weakness of any one man in power. This is a marked contrast to the excesses of 18th century France, of course, which sparked the French Revolution. At this point, Ferguson once again veers too close to the thesis precipice. However, he's right in saying that one of the major factors of the Revolution was economic, and I enjoyed hearing the full story. It is amazing how much people could accomplish so quickly and efficiently in the days before modern telecommunication.
As the book continues to the present-day financial scene, more esoteric terms begin to clutter Ferguson's vocabulary. Ferguson does his best to provide explanations, especially in footnotes, but it still makes for slow and difficult reading. I know it's unusual for me to express a dislike of numbers, since I'm studying math, but it's true: I find them shifty, which is the source of my unease about economics. The jargon Ferguson so carelessly bandies about only increases that sense of unease, to the point where my eyes were glazing over (although I was also tired). Again, though, as a mathematician-in-training I understand that jargon is only jargon to the uninitiated. (And on that note, in chapter 6—page 321 in my edition—Ferguson includes the book's sole mathematical formula, used to calculate the price of an option. Afterward, he adds, "Feeling a bit baffled? Can't follow the algebra? To be honest, I am a bit baffled too." Meanwhile, I'm going, "Yay, finally something I can understand!") I'll take Ferguson at his word that all these terms mean what he says they mean and that they work like he says they do. Nor do I expect him to give me a crash course in economics—there's reasons people earn degrees in this field; I won't learn it from a single book. Unfortunately, I did find the last two chapters, particularly the last chapter, so dense with terminology I could hardly follow that they were very difficult for me to read . . . I will confess I began skimming.
One explanation I did follow was the rise of the insurance industry. Not as fascinating as Renaissance economics, but it's a close second! Ferguson clearly explains the origins of modern insurance companies and the way in which modern insurance operates—not just from the point of view of the policy-holder, which is easy enough to understand, but from the point of view of insurance companies. We're living in an era where insurance companies have substantial influence on the economy and on public policy (I'm looking at you, U.S. health care reform debate). Understanding how and why insurance companies operate as they do is key to understanding what's happening in the modern political landscape. The same goes for mortgages and the real estate game, which Ferguson covers in the subsequent chapter, albeit with that aforementioned increase in jargon.
Having read The Ascent of Money, I feel like I've learned more, and—perhaps more importantly—I feel more confident in what I know. Whereas before I knew only that the recent turmoil was caused, in part, by subprime mortgages and derivatives, now I think I could explain what those things are to other people. Or, you know, I could just tell them to read this book.
As I began reading, I reacted with scorn to Niall Ferguson's intense introduction, thinking that this would be another one of those books where the author takes his pet thesis and tries to show that it is the real reason behind everything that's happened in history. Fortunately, Ferguson toned down the rhetoric after the introduction and instead focused on imparting and interpreting the facts.
The book follows a roughly chronological path, but only because Ferguson tackles components of the economy in increasingly complex order. Each chapter is about some specific aspect of finances, such as the bond market, the stock market, mortgages, etc. Hence, Ferguson treads over the same historical periods several times, but each time with fresh eyes. I enjoyed this categorization scheme, and I think it worked better than a strict chronological organization would have. Above all, it helped stress the interdependence of these various components; they did not arise in a vacuum and they are still closely-linked today.
My favourite part of The Ascent of Money concerns the financial history of the Renaissance. Ferguson mentions the rise of the Medicis, explaining how their decentralized approach to banking protected them from the weakness of any one man in power. This is a marked contrast to the excesses of 18th century France, of course, which sparked the French Revolution. At this point, Ferguson once again veers too close to the thesis precipice. However, he's right in saying that one of the major factors of the Revolution was economic, and I enjoyed hearing the full story. It is amazing how much people could accomplish so quickly and efficiently in the days before modern telecommunication.
As the book continues to the present-day financial scene, more esoteric terms begin to clutter Ferguson's vocabulary. Ferguson does his best to provide explanations, especially in footnotes, but it still makes for slow and difficult reading. I know it's unusual for me to express a dislike of numbers, since I'm studying math, but it's true: I find them shifty, which is the source of my unease about economics. The jargon Ferguson so carelessly bandies about only increases that sense of unease, to the point where my eyes were glazing over (although I was also tired). Again, though, as a mathematician-in-training I understand that jargon is only jargon to the uninitiated. (And on that note, in chapter 6—page 321 in my edition—Ferguson includes the book's sole mathematical formula, used to calculate the price of an option. Afterward, he adds, "Feeling a bit baffled? Can't follow the algebra? To be honest, I am a bit baffled too." Meanwhile, I'm going, "Yay, finally something I can understand!") I'll take Ferguson at his word that all these terms mean what he says they mean and that they work like he says they do. Nor do I expect him to give me a crash course in economics—there's reasons people earn degrees in this field; I won't learn it from a single book. Unfortunately, I did find the last two chapters, particularly the last chapter, so dense with terminology I could hardly follow that they were very difficult for me to read . . . I will confess I began skimming.
One explanation I did follow was the rise of the insurance industry. Not as fascinating as Renaissance economics, but it's a close second! Ferguson clearly explains the origins of modern insurance companies and the way in which modern insurance operates—not just from the point of view of the policy-holder, which is easy enough to understand, but from the point of view of insurance companies. We're living in an era where insurance companies have substantial influence on the economy and on public policy (I'm looking at you, U.S. health care reform debate). Understanding how and why insurance companies operate as they do is key to understanding what's happening in the modern political landscape. The same goes for mortgages and the real estate game, which Ferguson covers in the subsequent chapter, albeit with that aforementioned increase in jargon.
Having read The Ascent of Money, I feel like I've learned more, and—perhaps more importantly—I feel more confident in what I know. Whereas before I knew only that the recent turmoil was caused, in part, by subprime mortgages and derivatives, now I think I could explain what those things are to other people. Or, you know, I could just tell them to read this book.
The back cover of Why We Broke Up warns that “Min and Ed’s story of heartbreak may remind you of your own”. I’d like to begin this review with some kind of witty observation about high school break-ups. Thing is, I can’t; I bring a different perspective. Min and Ed’s story of heartbreak doesn’t remind me of my own, because I don’t have such a story. I didn’t have a relationship, short or long, in high school or otherwise. I have never dumped nor been dumped, never amicably stopped seeing someone nor suffered hours of recriminations. I made a few half-hearted stabs at the whole thing, decided it wasn’t for me, and then gradually realized with some relief that it is in fact possible to opt-out of this whole crazy thing. So I lack any frame of reference for stories like this. That doesn’t stop me from pursuing them; I love love stories and stories about relationships and sex and everything that has to do with humans loving and hating on other humans. But I approach them from a different angle than many other readers might.
Maybe that’s why Why We Broke Up didn’t do much for me in the beginning. Because it certainly wasn’t Daniel Handler’s superb characterization or Maira Kalman’s utterly appropriate illustrations. This is not just a love letter; it is a love letter to love letters. Everything about this book, from its binding and glossy pages to the story and its construction and the illustrations that accompany each chapter, is high quality. The story itself is a nice spin on break-up tales: it is essentially one giant flashback organized roughly chronologically and loosely around objects that Min is returning to Ed in a break-up box. Though the objects provide a starting point, each chapter quickly pulls back and chronicles a specific moment or event in their relationship, with Min foreshadowing and reflecting on possible warning signs even as she celebrates the good parts too.
I assume that this central contradiction of relationships is something others find fascinating as well: in most cases, there is something good going on in a relationship. It’s the flame, after all, that keeps the love burning. Despite that goodness, though, something else brings the relationship to an end. And usually there is an awareness among parties that these relationships are not “forever”, as Min herself reflects at one point. She and Ed are young and chances are they will one day stop dating. But she employs the essential cognitive dissonance and puts this to one side and carries on until that inevitable moment when the break-up comes, perhaps sooner than she expected. Which brings us to the present, to Min writing the letter with her best friend, who mopes with unrequited love of her, by her side.
I like that Handler and Kalman do not make this a hatchet job of Ed, though my opinion of him is very poor indeed. They are careful to ground these characters in their context. This is a smaller town, a more conservative town, one where Christian and Jewish upbringings cause kids to reflect on whether or not losing their virginity is a worthwhile high school pursuit. Ed is very much a 17-year-old popular guy. I suspect in some ways he views Min as his manic pixie dream girl. He claims that he loves her, and I don’t know if that’s accurate (he probably doesn’t know either), but I think he is genuinely surprised to find out that she is hurt by his cheating. He knows it is wrong—hence why he hides it—but he has just never encountered someone who reacts like Min does. In this way, Handler and Kalman accurately portray the way we socialize young men to view women as interchangeable objects for sex and attention. In the end, Ed might view Min as a “different” type of distraction, but she is ultimately just another object to him—and when she is not around to fulfil his needs, be they emotional or physical, hey, Annette is right there outside his window. Convenience is king, amirite?
But I digress. Min mentions the good times as well as the bad, the ways in which dating Ed helped bring her out of a shell she had constructed around herself with the help of her friends. Min lives for (fictional) old movies, this obsession for cinema a useful shorthand for the intellectual introversion that allows her to ignore her physicality. She is not of Ed’s world and he is not of hers, and theirs is not a doomed or forbidden romance; this is not a story of starcrossed lovers. It’s a mis-match, one that everyone else seems painfully aware of. Their relationship is a plate spinning in the air, and the spectators are waiting for it to drop and shatter.
Along these lines, I never really saw what Min saw in Ed. I mean, I get that she saw something, but I didn’t like him from the start. I find this so odd, because it is from her perspective; we should see why she finds Ed attractive. Aside from the physical attraction, though, there doesn’t seem to be much that is unique about how Ed acts towards her.
I also had a hard time with the style of Min’s narration. The stream-of-consciousness, nearly-never-ending sentences are hard to read unless you really slow down and work your way through them. It comes off, in part, like Handler is trying too hard. I don’t know if this is intentional because he wants to make Min sound affected and semi-pretentious in the way such outsider teenagers like to see themselves. Reading the book, though, I cringed at parts that felt over the top. Maybe it’s the epistolary format reminding me of The Breakfast Club too, which is a good movie but also a pretentious one.
So for most of this book I was leaning towards 2 stars. It is OK but not great—would recommend to people who are not me, i.e., the younger teenage audience it’s probably intended for.
The last act improves the book, however. Ed cheating on Min is not a surprise, but Handler orchestrates the reveal so very well. The scene is set perfectly, as is the aftermath, for maximum pathos. I knew that something like this had to go down, and I was not disappointed. Min’s reaction is gratifying (to the reader) because unlike my struggle to identify the source of her feelings for Ed, this immediately feels real and true. Even though, as I mentioned at the beginning of this review, I’ve never gone through what Min has gone through, I get how she is feeling betrayed. And just like a twist at the end of a movie makes you think back and revise your opinion of once-cryptic scenes, this section retroactively makes Min’s attitude and tone more sensible. She rage-flips and then goes numb. This letter is supposed to be a dismissal of Ed, a nonchalant message to let him know that she is so over him—that is a lie and everyone involved knows it, but it’s one of those tacitly-accepted lies that no one is going to challenge right now.
The climax is also a moment where Kalman’s illustrations provide unique insight. Min nearly vandalizes a newspaper clipping on the wall of the flower shop after she discovers Ed’s infidelity. Handler doesn’t tell us it’s a clipping, just that Min sees something that drives home Ed’s dishonesty and that the shopkeeper doesn’t want her ruining it because he was a big fan. Without Kalman’s illustration depicting the clipping that announces Lottie Carlson’s death, this small exchange recedes into the background of the already-powerful and emotionally-charged scene. Thanks to Kalman, this moment is now burned into my memory of the book. While illustrated novels are not a gimmick I would like to see become popular, when they are used as effectively as they are here, it is a joy.
So Why We Broke Up managed to do that rare thing where a book redeems itself in its final moments. I think there are other readers who will enjoy this a lot more than me, but I am happy that I read it. I’m still not in love, but I’m not breaking up with it either.
Maybe that’s why Why We Broke Up didn’t do much for me in the beginning. Because it certainly wasn’t Daniel Handler’s superb characterization or Maira Kalman’s utterly appropriate illustrations. This is not just a love letter; it is a love letter to love letters. Everything about this book, from its binding and glossy pages to the story and its construction and the illustrations that accompany each chapter, is high quality. The story itself is a nice spin on break-up tales: it is essentially one giant flashback organized roughly chronologically and loosely around objects that Min is returning to Ed in a break-up box. Though the objects provide a starting point, each chapter quickly pulls back and chronicles a specific moment or event in their relationship, with Min foreshadowing and reflecting on possible warning signs even as she celebrates the good parts too.
I assume that this central contradiction of relationships is something others find fascinating as well: in most cases, there is something good going on in a relationship. It’s the flame, after all, that keeps the love burning. Despite that goodness, though, something else brings the relationship to an end. And usually there is an awareness among parties that these relationships are not “forever”, as Min herself reflects at one point. She and Ed are young and chances are they will one day stop dating. But she employs the essential cognitive dissonance and puts this to one side and carries on until that inevitable moment when the break-up comes, perhaps sooner than she expected. Which brings us to the present, to Min writing the letter with her best friend, who mopes with unrequited love of her, by her side.
I like that Handler and Kalman do not make this a hatchet job of Ed, though my opinion of him is very poor indeed. They are careful to ground these characters in their context. This is a smaller town, a more conservative town, one where Christian and Jewish upbringings cause kids to reflect on whether or not losing their virginity is a worthwhile high school pursuit. Ed is very much a 17-year-old popular guy. I suspect in some ways he views Min as his manic pixie dream girl. He claims that he loves her, and I don’t know if that’s accurate (he probably doesn’t know either), but I think he is genuinely surprised to find out that she is hurt by his cheating. He knows it is wrong—hence why he hides it—but he has just never encountered someone who reacts like Min does. In this way, Handler and Kalman accurately portray the way we socialize young men to view women as interchangeable objects for sex and attention. In the end, Ed might view Min as a “different” type of distraction, but she is ultimately just another object to him—and when she is not around to fulfil his needs, be they emotional or physical, hey, Annette is right there outside his window. Convenience is king, amirite?
But I digress. Min mentions the good times as well as the bad, the ways in which dating Ed helped bring her out of a shell she had constructed around herself with the help of her friends. Min lives for (fictional) old movies, this obsession for cinema a useful shorthand for the intellectual introversion that allows her to ignore her physicality. She is not of Ed’s world and he is not of hers, and theirs is not a doomed or forbidden romance; this is not a story of starcrossed lovers. It’s a mis-match, one that everyone else seems painfully aware of. Their relationship is a plate spinning in the air, and the spectators are waiting for it to drop and shatter.
Along these lines, I never really saw what Min saw in Ed. I mean, I get that she saw something, but I didn’t like him from the start. I find this so odd, because it is from her perspective; we should see why she finds Ed attractive. Aside from the physical attraction, though, there doesn’t seem to be much that is unique about how Ed acts towards her.
I also had a hard time with the style of Min’s narration. The stream-of-consciousness, nearly-never-ending sentences are hard to read unless you really slow down and work your way through them. It comes off, in part, like Handler is trying too hard. I don’t know if this is intentional because he wants to make Min sound affected and semi-pretentious in the way such outsider teenagers like to see themselves. Reading the book, though, I cringed at parts that felt over the top. Maybe it’s the epistolary format reminding me of The Breakfast Club too, which is a good movie but also a pretentious one.
So for most of this book I was leaning towards 2 stars. It is OK but not great—would recommend to people who are not me, i.e., the younger teenage audience it’s probably intended for.
The last act improves the book, however. Ed cheating on Min is not a surprise, but Handler orchestrates the reveal so very well. The scene is set perfectly, as is the aftermath, for maximum pathos. I knew that something like this had to go down, and I was not disappointed. Min’s reaction is gratifying (to the reader) because unlike my struggle to identify the source of her feelings for Ed, this immediately feels real and true. Even though, as I mentioned at the beginning of this review, I’ve never gone through what Min has gone through, I get how she is feeling betrayed. And just like a twist at the end of a movie makes you think back and revise your opinion of once-cryptic scenes, this section retroactively makes Min’s attitude and tone more sensible. She rage-flips and then goes numb. This letter is supposed to be a dismissal of Ed, a nonchalant message to let him know that she is so over him—that is a lie and everyone involved knows it, but it’s one of those tacitly-accepted lies that no one is going to challenge right now.
The climax is also a moment where Kalman’s illustrations provide unique insight. Min nearly vandalizes a newspaper clipping on the wall of the flower shop after she discovers Ed’s infidelity. Handler doesn’t tell us it’s a clipping, just that Min sees something that drives home Ed’s dishonesty and that the shopkeeper doesn’t want her ruining it because he was a big fan. Without Kalman’s illustration depicting the clipping that announces Lottie Carlson’s death, this small exchange recedes into the background of the already-powerful and emotionally-charged scene. Thanks to Kalman, this moment is now burned into my memory of the book. While illustrated novels are not a gimmick I would like to see become popular, when they are used as effectively as they are here, it is a joy.
So Why We Broke Up managed to do that rare thing where a book redeems itself in its final moments. I think there are other readers who will enjoy this a lot more than me, but I am happy that I read it. I’m still not in love, but I’m not breaking up with it either.
Damn but the cuts keep coming.
This is probably one of my favourite books of the series. The Illusion is Tobias’ moment. Although early books in the series address the challenges Tobias faces living as a hawk, this book drives home the incompatibility of his life with human lives. Red-tailed hawks don’t live as long as humans. Tobias can only assume human form for two hour intervals, assuming he doesn’t want to lose his morphing ability. And as his friends age in their human forms, his human morph will always be that of a teenage boy.
To top off the sucker punch, this book explicitly addresses the attraction between Tobias and Rachel, from beginning to end. There is no subtext here, no “will they or won’t they”. From the drama-infused opening to that ending monologue where he realizes that he is human, bird, and “The person that Rachel loves” (cry), this is all about love. And of course, like any great literature, it’s doomed love.
Applegate addresses the anti-morphing ray more directly in this book. Tobias serves as bait, because the red-tailed hawk his not a morph but his actual form, so the ray won’t work when turned on him. What the Animorphs don’t count on, however, is that the Controller in charge of the ray is an insane Yeerk in the body of an insane teenage girl (an anti-Rachel, if you will) who decides that torturing Tobias is much better than merely killing him after the ray doesn’t work.
Not going to lie, the middle part of this book is incredibly uncomfortable. Like, watching a torture scene in a Tarantino movie uncomfortable. OK, maybe not that bad … but this is definitely one of the most graphic psychological moments of antagonism in the entire series. The sub-visser strips Tobias raw, emotionally speaking. If this were a TV series, The Illusion would be a clip show, with flashbacks to previous episodes interwoven through the narrative. First Tobias experiences incredible moments of pain, and then the sub-visser complements that with excruciating moments of pleasure. All the while he tries to take refuge in his subconscious, hawk and human, while he rails from the realities that Rachel might be dead and he might never get out of here. If this were a TV show, the entire episode would hinge on the performance of the actor playing Tobias. In the case of the book, Tobias’ voice is exquisite in its portrayal of his hurt and his anger.
There is commentary here about war too, of course. It actually comes fairly early in the book, as Rachel talks about how much she wants Tobias to be human with her, but they agree he should stay as a hawk because then he can help in the fight. This is one of the costs of war that isn’t always made manifest amidst the depictions of battles and campaigns: war is a suspension of the ordinary. It’s the “we’ll get married after the war” you occasionally see. Tobias is hurting, but he can’t process that hurt right now, because he has a war to fight. So he bottles it all up, stuffs it down into his subconscious, and soldiers on. Like that’s healthy.
Then there’s the ending. It’s perfect. The Animorphs get a day at the beach. No Yeerks. No lingering problems. Just a single, blessed moment of relaxation. For once everyone gets a chance to be, if not happy, then content. It is a calm before the storm, of course—nothing lasts forever and the war is far from over, with everything about to get worse. But it is such a sharp contrast to everything that just happened, and it is a reminder that there will never necessarily be a good or perfect time to take that walk, go to that beach, or be happy alongside the person you love: you just have to seize the moments as they come, because you don’t know how long they’ll last or when you’ll get another.
This one is for Rachel and Tobias. Your doomed love is too big for my heart.
This is probably one of my favourite books of the series. The Illusion is Tobias’ moment. Although early books in the series address the challenges Tobias faces living as a hawk, this book drives home the incompatibility of his life with human lives. Red-tailed hawks don’t live as long as humans. Tobias can only assume human form for two hour intervals, assuming he doesn’t want to lose his morphing ability. And as his friends age in their human forms, his human morph will always be that of a teenage boy.
To top off the sucker punch, this book explicitly addresses the attraction between Tobias and Rachel, from beginning to end. There is no subtext here, no “will they or won’t they”. From the drama-infused opening to that ending monologue where he realizes that he is human, bird, and “The person that Rachel loves” (cry), this is all about love. And of course, like any great literature, it’s doomed love.
Applegate addresses the anti-morphing ray more directly in this book. Tobias serves as bait, because the red-tailed hawk his not a morph but his actual form, so the ray won’t work when turned on him. What the Animorphs don’t count on, however, is that the Controller in charge of the ray is an insane Yeerk in the body of an insane teenage girl (an anti-Rachel, if you will) who decides that torturing Tobias is much better than merely killing him after the ray doesn’t work.
Not going to lie, the middle part of this book is incredibly uncomfortable. Like, watching a torture scene in a Tarantino movie uncomfortable. OK, maybe not that bad … but this is definitely one of the most graphic psychological moments of antagonism in the entire series. The sub-visser strips Tobias raw, emotionally speaking. If this were a TV series, The Illusion would be a clip show, with flashbacks to previous episodes interwoven through the narrative. First Tobias experiences incredible moments of pain, and then the sub-visser complements that with excruciating moments of pleasure. All the while he tries to take refuge in his subconscious, hawk and human, while he rails from the realities that Rachel might be dead and he might never get out of here. If this were a TV show, the entire episode would hinge on the performance of the actor playing Tobias. In the case of the book, Tobias’ voice is exquisite in its portrayal of his hurt and his anger.
There is commentary here about war too, of course. It actually comes fairly early in the book, as Rachel talks about how much she wants Tobias to be human with her, but they agree he should stay as a hawk because then he can help in the fight. This is one of the costs of war that isn’t always made manifest amidst the depictions of battles and campaigns: war is a suspension of the ordinary. It’s the “we’ll get married after the war” you occasionally see. Tobias is hurting, but he can’t process that hurt right now, because he has a war to fight. So he bottles it all up, stuffs it down into his subconscious, and soldiers on. Like that’s healthy.
Then there’s the ending. It’s perfect. The Animorphs get a day at the beach. No Yeerks. No lingering problems. Just a single, blessed moment of relaxation. For once everyone gets a chance to be, if not happy, then content. It is a calm before the storm, of course—nothing lasts forever and the war is far from over, with everything about to get worse. But it is such a sharp contrast to everything that just happened, and it is a reminder that there will never necessarily be a good or perfect time to take that walk, go to that beach, or be happy alongside the person you love: you just have to seize the moments as they come, because you don’t know how long they’ll last or when you’ll get another.
This one is for Rachel and Tobias. Your doomed love is too big for my heart.