thebacklistborrower's Reviews (570)

If you have heard of this book, you’ve also either seen or heard the line “Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!” That I think is what ultimately sells a lot of people. It sold me. But, while I liked this book and will *definitely* read the second (more on that), I think I would have liked it more if that hadn’t been my first impression going in.

The thing is, the book, to me, felt like a sleeper agent. It starts pretty slow. Muir builds the world, and a lot of it is gaps that you just have to fill in, which is the kind of world-building I enjoy, and it definitely helps build the mysterious ambience of the book. We also meet Harrowhark and Gideon, and figure out we are supposed to like them or loathe them. 

When they get called away to this “haunted gothic palace in space”, thing start to pick up, but I *almost* DNF’d it in this part. Like |-| close. But Instagram told me to hold on, so I did, and the action picked up, and the mystery picked up, and some of these weird gaps in the world start getting filled in (and many don’t). However, 50 pages from the end, I was thinking “this was fun, but I might not rush to read the sequel”. Then the last 50 pages happened and HOLY MOLY I would have picked up Harrow the Ninth then and there if I could have. So if you’re reading it and not sure, keep going. 

Now why would I have liked it better without that opening line?  It's hard to say without running out my caption limit, but generally it's that the book is actually a lot different than what I assumed based on that line -- maybe a fun, sexy adventure with dark humour. Instead I thought it was more a mysterious, tense thriller full of suspicion and antagonism. Only Gideon has any humour, but admittedly she is good at it! 

Now as I said, I ended up really enjoying the book, so my main message is if you read Gideon the Ninth, give it time and maybe adjust your expectations from what is on the dust jacket. It is definitely worth it!

Y’ALL THIS BOOK. This book *will* be one of my favourites this year. After loving CL Polk’s “The Midnight Bargain” for Canada Reads this year, I knew I had to read their other novels, and Witchmark was the first to come across my library loans pile. 

A synopsis is tricky as this book has so much packed in it. Taking place in a 1918-ish world where witchcraft is feared by the general public (but actually wielded by the most wealthy and privileged), a doctor hides his abilities while working in a psychiatric hospital, treating patients sent home from war with PTSD. However, when one patient dies mysteriously at the hospital claiming he was poisoned, he partners up with a handsome, yet mysterious man to solve the murder. 

Full of magic, intrigue, and mystery, and addressing issues like mental health, social and political privilege, discrimination, self-determination, the impacts of war and modernization, as well as a little romance, I mean it literally when I mean this book has something for everyone. Miles and Tristan are both very likable characters, and their slow-burn romance is cute and believable, while also not taking over the story. While there is a lot going on, it works, adding to the fast-paced and urgent tone of the book, and is all tied up by the end. 

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Samuel Roukin, and it was a great production. I loved the narrator’s voice and while he did do unique voices for some characters, it wasn’t distracting or overdone.

Apparently this book has won all the awards, including a Nebula, World Fantasy, and a Lambda, which is really impressive for a first novel! There are two other books in this series, called The Kingston Cycle. If there is one thing CL Polk does well, it's balancing engaging, fun plots with serious themes that reflect issues in our own reality. I can only anticipate where it goes from here.

Whiny, boring, unlikable characters across the board, not sure why I should care about them. 

I came across this book in the book list for the @the_fold and as I had recently decided to take a break from literary fiction, I decided to grab it from the library. I am sure glad I did! 

The story follows Tau, a young man living in a land of perpetual war between his people - colonizers of the country- and the native tribes. He was born and raised in one of the lower castes of his rigidly divided society, forcing on him the destiny to fight at the front lines, and not expected to be much more than fodder. However, he is found by a commander that has been given privileges to try new training techniques with his unit in a bid for stronger soldiers. Tau has only one goal of vengeance against those who hurt his family. But he learns to fight with two swords and soon earns a name for himself amongst all the training camps, and at the same time, rattles the cages of the caste system that all are born into and none can escape.

It took me a few chapters to get into, but once I was in, it was like being strapped in a roller coaster. No getting off, no stopping, and only action until the last page is flipped. What really stood out to me is how masterfully Evan Winter wrote all the fight scenes (and there are a lot). In one of the FOLD workshops, he says he edits until the words disappear, and WOW does that work. I felt like I could see each step and swing and block in my head, without pause or break as I read. It actually did feel like the book wasn’t there. 

The story was also very engaging. There’s magic, demons, and dragons, but unlike some high fantasy, I wouldn’t say there is a “Big bad” in the form of the Pure Evil Villain, but rather the conflict is the caste system and those upholding it, and colonialism and those who benefit from it. Tau is single minded in his goal, but puts pretty decent dents in these systems to achieve it. The second in the series, Fires of Vengeance is already in my grasp and I’m super excited to see where it goes from here.

I discovered Jael Richardson during Canada Reads 2020. If you’re a fan, be sure to follow her on Instagram for the best post-show breakdown each day of the debates. It was only after that I learned she is a director for The Festival of Literary Diversity, CBC columnist, and even before writing Gutter Child was a published author (need any more reasons to give her a follow?).

Gutter Child is a book about a world where there are two castes of people: those born “Mainland”, who are white, privileged, and on the winning side of an historic war, and “gutter people”, people of colour, descendants of the losers of that same war, who are born with a portion of an intergenerational debt of war reparations, and live as indentured servants to Mainland folk to repay it. 

Elimina is a Gutter Child raised in the Mainland as a social experiment to determine if Gutter people can be civilized. But when her foster family dies, she is sent to a school to prepare her for servitude. It is there that she meets other Gutter people, connects with her cultural history, and sees first hand the racism, classism, and prejudice that she experienced growing up in a white community isn’t only her experience, but it is systemic-- the very foundation of her society. 

This was such a good book. Jael builds a deep world and sympathy for Elimina in very little time, allowing the plot progress almost immediately. It was a read that I felt hooked into within pages of starting and it was very hard to put down. Little pieces of exposition into the world and Elimina’s history are scattered both through dialogue and the things left unsaid. As a reader, one can easily draw parallels between the racism, prejudice, and privilege in Mainside to our world, but the book also does not read like a moralistic fable. It definitely stands on its own feet as an excellent story that can also be used as a magnifying glass on our own world. 

I’d strongly recommend this book to anybody looking for something engaging, interesting, and satisfying to read.

This book was a CBC Canada Reads longlist book, and I read it while waiting for one of the shortlists to show up. I had read Lullabies for Little Criminals years ago (also a Canada Reads pick), and it has stuck with me ever since.

There are a lot of similarities between the two books: both broadly about children whose childhoods were stolen from them. The Lonely Hearts Hotel is about two children born in a home for unwed pregnant girls. Rose and Pierrot connect young with their ability to entertain: Pierrot a savant at the piano, and Rose as a clown and dancer. Originally punished for this, the nuns running the orphanage eventually realize they can exploit these talents in the homes of the rich to get more money until Pierrot is adopted and Rose is sent to work as a nanny, and they lose touch, living lives where they did what they could to scrape by, run from trauma, make ends meet, and try to get by. When they do find each other, a plan is hatched to make it so big they don’t struggle again.

This book might not have been the escape many would have wanted. There is abuse, violence, and drugs as these two teenagers-- still children-- try to get by in a world that doesn't care about them. I don’t hesitate to say it was sad throughout. In this book, O’Neill plants sadness, and tends to it, until it grows into something new and transformed. Even at the end, when Rose and  Pierrot are reunited and happy, the sadness is there. It grows through their happy facade and eventually breaks it apart. 

All that being said, it is a beautifully written book, and if you are in the mood for something melancholic and beautiful in its own way, I’d recommend this book to read. Just know what is lying ahead.

 

  This is one of those novels I feel like I was seeing a lot about over the past few months, so I was pretty intrigued when it came up in my book club. Broadly about a woman and her adult son, and their cat, it went in directions I never really expected. Frances Price, born rich and married rich, spends the last of her fortune, despite multiple warnings by her accountant. Her adult son Malcom has failed to launch, and fails to hold down much of anything as he maintains an odd loyalty to his mother. And then Small Frank the cat, who Frances believes hosts her dead husband’s soul, seems precocious, but still just a cat. 

They escape from New York to Paris, using the rest of their money, and ultimately living in a friend’s second home for free. There, Frances hatches a plan, Small Frank runs away, and Malcom continues to just drift. Eventually, they attract a whole host of folk -- the odds and ends of society, as they seek to find Small Frank once more. 

I think this book was witty and had interesting characters, but ultimately, might have been better reading if I had been looking for wry observations of the upper class. I recently decided to go on a sci-fi/fantasy kick, and found it hard to stay engaged to this story for more than a few pages at a time. Fortunately, it has very short chapters which made picking up and putting down the book very easy. Overall, I thought the book had interesting people, but was maybe more character driven than I needed right now.

 This is one of those novels I feel like I was seeing a lot about over the past few months, so I was pretty 

One of my favourite things are glaciers. Part of me thinks this is a bit of a morbid fascination, since all but the biggest glaciers are supposed to melt within the next century, but it is what it is. Glaciers are just really, really cool. They shape mountains, cool our atmosphere in more ways than one, are heavy enough to score rock and crush it into flour, and just look really gorgeous.

So I bought this coffee table book on a holiday, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Mary Vaux was a woman who, in the early 1900s, explored the Canadian rockies with her husband, capturing photos year after year of glaciers. This book mirrors her photos with photos taken 100 years later by her great-grand-nephew. 

A lot of these are depressing. But still so gorgeous. Some of my favourite pages are at the end, which aren’t photos of mountains but people: photos that Mary Vaux took of engineers with their engines, railway workers, mountain guides, and tourists compared to people in the same roles today. 

This book was on my TBR for a very, very long time. Of course, I heard all the hype when it first came out, but as most of my books come from the library, I tend to not read new releases all that often.

This book was a wild trip. Opening the book to a letter with a “Men’s Writers Association” letterhead, from a man writing deferentially who we assume is a significant woman author to curry her favour, immediately sets the tone for the book and sets a fascinating foundation for the rest of the book. I was blown away by the end of the end of those few pages.
 
Cw: rape

The question that I had, that took nearly two thirds of the book to answer, was what the timelines were. And I’m not sure if I just didn’t get it or if it was written this way, but I felt constantly unsure as to whether the book was written in the present day, with the Day of the Girls happening in the past, or if it was written in the near future, with the Day happening in the present. Eventually though, I started to see the truth that the Day was in the present, and the book was written in the far future, after a nuclear annihilation. This was WILD to me. I stopped, and went back, re-reading parts, re-examining some of the figures and images in the book, re-evaluating everything I had read in the story, and I LOVED that. 
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There were some parts that I didn’t appreciate so much, particularly the rape scenes. I understand they were included to show that true equivalency to the violence men perpetuate in our present, but I still didn’t like it. I’m an optimistic person, and I reject the idea that simply flipping the gender power script would cause so many women to become so incredibly violent, to the point of using nuclear weaponry.

As a result, despite loving the twist and broadly liking the concept, I think overall this book was just a *meh* for me. I think if this was an alternate-past storyline, written from our present, it could have worked a lot better, but I just can’t believe moving forward our global societies would go in that direction. And try as I might, I can’t suspend that belief.