march reading wrap-up
Wednesday, 31 March 2021 12:04![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
braintransplantcity of illusions by ursula k le guin
rating: 3.5
summary: what if you got your memory wiped by aliens and had to go find them again to ask for it back? and they told you there was no war in ba sing se?
comments: i did struggle with this one a little bit in the middle section! the intro where falk gets adopted into the small forest community made me tenderhearted, but the middle portion where he is journeying to es toch was a little hit or miss. i think the concept of falk/ramarren’s separate memories and personalities fusing and struggling for control inside one body was a pretty cool climax. the ending was okay, though strangely dissatisfying for me...also it makes so much sense that uklg wrote this book before the left hand of darkness/the dispossessed; you can see shades of both in this one so much it's unreal! overall i had a good time, but i don't particularly recommend this one and don’t think i will be revisiting it. i am also currently using this book for my sociolinguistics research project where i attempt to understand the ideology about truth/lies presented by the different groups in the story. yeehaw!
highlight: It was not his name he had come here to learn, but the sun’s. The true name of the sun.
pages: 160
a feast for crows by grrm
rating: 5
summary: what if the only person who deserved a prestigious title was also the only person not allowed to have it?
comments: i originally put this off because i was like how the fuck am i gonna get through 1000+ pages without a single jon snow POV chapter!!! but actually i had a great time reading this and came to love some POV characters a lot more than i did previously...brienne, jaime, asha, and arya in particular. jaime and brienne are literally just [oscar isaac gif] lets get into gender politics. brienne totally shines for me in this one...her dogged search for the stark sisters, her unshakeable commitment to good, her strength and her softness...wtf i love her so much. its so magical when her and jaime randomly think of each other during their travels like oh my god they were foils!! tbh brienne is also a foil to sandor but hes not a POV. did i mention that sandor is heavily implied to have retired to an island and become a monk who's not allowed to speak in this book? because its really good.
highlight: “You sound as if you pity him,” said Brienne. / “You would have pitied him as well if you had seen him near the end.”
pages: 1,061
a dance with dragons by grrm
rating: 5
summary: what if everything fell apart? what if everyone became someone else?
comments: this one opens on a skinchanger dying and leaving his soul behind in a wolf he had been warging into, which absolutely sets the tone for how dark and weird this book gets. i love dark and weird, in fact im here for dark and weird, so i really enjoyed this book. also seeing as jon snow POVs are my #1 asoiaf priority, i was pleased as this book contains truly elite jon + stannis arguing content, and the wall antics basically devolve into a reverse dating sim in which jon tries desperately not to fall in love with anyone. plus its both wildly funny and painful to watch jon mess up being lord commander so badly despite the fact that the values inherent in the choices he makes are genuinely humanitarian and right. on top of that, theon’s chapters just knocked the wind out of me. grrm really made me feel for a character i had previously grown to dislike, and theon’s character arc in this book is soooo great. its worth mentioning that the torture/abuse scenes in theon’s chapters are well written not only because they are deeply horrifying but also because grrm has enough restraint to keep it from becoming pornographic (something the show handled incredibly poorly). the entire greyjoy family is a total riot in this one. asha slay.
highlight: And Robb. Robb who had been more a brother to Theon than any son born of Balon Greyjoy. Murdered at the Red Wedding, butchered by the Freys. I should have been with him. Where was I? I should have died with him.
pages: 1,125
the sun trail by erin hunt
rating: 1 star
summary: i can’t formulate a what if question for this its just warrior cats prequel lore
comments: you guys it was bad. it was so bad. i wanted to start my revisit of warriors with books i hadn’t read before and that was my mistake. erin hunt caught me slipping. 90% percent of this book is discussion about hunting, discussion about walking, or the hunting and the walking. boring ass characters, boring plot, boring boring boring. the warrior cats authorship industrial complex has deteriorated severely!!!!
highlight: N/A
pages: 313
into the wild by erin hunt
rating: 3 stars
summary: what if a house cat said fuck my life and joined a bunch of wild cats to go fight in a war????
comments: after the disappointment of the sun trail i was like ok i will start with the first warriors book i ever read and this one DID live up to my memory pretty well. like is it middle grade and dumb? yes. but its really good at being middle grade and dumb. for some reason i thought that fireheart became clan leader by the end of this one before i quickly realized about halfway through that the clan leader plot point was actually a slow build across 6 books. the cat politics are obviously not that complex but they are kind of fun and do have some nuance...like the inner clan dynamix the protag has to navigate + the interclan dynamix occurring between the clans + trying to gauge what is happening in shadowclan is at the very least compelling. the “twist” was obvious but it was revealed gradually and also i thought the choice to have the protag not reveal it to anyone (and if i remember right, he doesn’t until the end of the mini series) is pretty cool. wow this sounds so dumb. nostalgia is a disease!!!!!!!!
highlight: “You look like a brand of fire in this sunlight.”
pages: 288
hirunaka no ryuusei by mika yamamori (entire manga)
rating: 3 star
summary: what if you transferred schools and befriended a shyboy.
comments: ok yeah this was truly the second love = true love blueprint. mamura is soooo cudie...the reveal that he’s not cool and aloof, he just avoids girls because they make him blush is top tier. i was glad to remember that i had the brains to hate the teacher/student romance(?) plot even when i was in middle school...shishio still sucks!!! fuck that guy. 3 stars because honestly it was kind of boring even though it was cute, plus the shishio/suzume will they won’t they went on for way too long.
highlight: N/A
pages: who could say
no subject
2021-04-04 12:08 (UTC)