is your heart a sponge or a fist?

IMPERIAL RADCH TRILOGY by ANN LECKIE

RATING: 5 stars outstanding show-stopping life-changing groundbreaking exquisite and unprecedentedly beautiful

SUMMARY: There are no words.........

COMMENTS: I decided to finally finish this trilogy after being killed in January of 2021 by Ancillary Justice. I started with a complete re-read of Justice to refresh my memory, and it is still as devastating and fun and thoughtful and interesting and intense as ever. Anyways Breq I love you so much forever until the sun explodes and we all die for real. I’ll just paraphrase from my original review of the first book about how Breq’s grief and rage and pain are so huge and REAL…the emotional core of her really drives the whole series to incredible places. Ann Leckie also deserves so much credit (in my opinion) for taking an outrageously difficult POV concept and making it totally coherent, as well as for having 1000 opportunities to make the obvious choice in terms of worldbuilding and just. Not doing that. The cultures and people and species in these books are simultaneously familiar enough to ring true and yet so bizarre as to be off putting. The Presger translators, Sphene, even Seivarden’s outdated Radchaai proclivities…effervescent stuff! I need to get into the short story/novella side of this universe which I only recently found out exists. Anyways. Breq/literally anyone MY SHIP REAL!!!!!!!!

HIGHLIGHTS: “That,” I said, “is why I hate you. / She laughed, as though I had said something moderately witty. “If that’s what you’re willing to do for someone you hate, what would you do for someone you love?”

HIGHLIGHTS: If you lose this gun, I will not live long enough to forgive you.

PAGES: 1,116 

TRANSLATION STATE by ANN LECKIE

RATING: 3.5 stars

SUMMARY: What if you were never what you thought you were?

COMMENTS: Overall this book feels more juvenile than the rest of the Ancillary universe, which I suppose makes sense given the circumstances of Qven (who I feel, despite being 1 of 3 narrators, the novel centers around). This book takes the universe so much farther into the weeds about multiple bodies being one Person. And I like it. I like to think about it. But ultimately this is pretty middling stuff and didn’t stick with me the way Leckie’s other work has! There were a lot of interesting things occurring in the margins and between the lines of this book; Enae’s family’s tea plantation dynamix, Presger translator babby school, weird ethnonationalist societies…but still. This one just doesn’t have the star power. For another author this might be a better book, you know???

HIGHLIGHT: N/A

PAGES: 422 

THE COLLECTED SCHIZOPHRENIAS by ESMÉ WEIJUN WANG

RATING: 4 stars

SUMMARY: What if you could never know if it was real?

COMMENTS: This was such an unexpected hit for me. It got recommended to me on Book Depository (RIP) while I was looking for something new to pick up. Wang is an incredibly captivating writer - such a rare treat for nonfiction. This book is about both schizophrenia as an illness/diagnoses/cultural conception as it is about Wang’s own experiences with it. If you enjoy medical anthropology or criticisms of mental healthcare or just want to read something truly interesting, you should pick this up. It gets a bit woo-woo near the end, though the author admits that - and has interesting thoughts about scientific views on woo-wooiness as well. It also introduced me to the world of Chronic Lyme which is a rabbit hole I cannot stop going down. I really enjoyed the clarity and sympathy this author brings to this topic. Definitely a standout read of the year for me!

HIGHLIGHT: I can’t speak to her now, but I do imagine what it was like to be her on the night she killed her brother. When I think about the murder, I think about how excessive thirteen shots is. I also think about how a man who loomed over your bed in the middle of the night, a man who claimed to be sent by God to kill your daughter, might seem like a man possessed by evil, and therefore capable of anything, including surviving multiple gunshot wounds -- even if you loved him once, or still do.

PAGES: 224

DAISY JONES AND THE SIX by TAYLOR JENKINS REID

RATING: 3.5 stars

SUMMARY: IDK what if you were straight and horny and married to someone else

COMMENTS: I read this after I watched the television show - which only got juicy in the very last episode. Basically the whole drive of this book (which is presented as the transcript of interviews with members of a band a decade or two post-disbandment) is a will-they-won’t-they romance between the two lead singers of a band, one of whom is an addict married to his first love, and the other of whom is an addict with self destructive hypersexual tendencies. I mean, I read it very quickly, and I had some fun, but this book is just above average in terms of overall quality. They should have had an affair for real!!!!! Boooo!!!!!!!!!!

HIGHLIGHTS: N/A

PAGES: 368 

EARTHLINGS by SAYAKA MURATA

RATING: 2.75

SUMMARY: How far would you go to be who you think you are?

COMMENTS: Mostly this book just made me wonder how I end up reading so many books involving cannibalism without seeking it out specifically. I wanted to enjoy this more but I simply didn’t! It has been a few months since I read this and honestly I don’t remember anything specific about it which is an indictment of its general blandness in my opinion.

HIGHLIGHT: N/A

PAGES: 247

AXIOM’S END by LINDSEY ELLIS

RATING: 2 stars

SUMMARY: What if you were reading a terrible first contact novel.

COMMENTS: Guuuuuys I really hated this one. I wanted to like it! But I just didn’t. The main character is genuinely outrageously boring, bland, and annoying - it was a struggle to get through this story alongside her. The vaguely horny human/alien relationship wasn’t even fun!!! BOOOOOO!!!!!!

HIGHLIGHT: N/A

PAGES: 384

THE HANDMAID’S TALE by MARGARET ATWOOD

RATING: 4 stars

SUMMARY: What if property was all you’ll ever be? What if you had to find happiness, had to make a life, had to stay yourself that way?

COMMENTS: Honestly I have no idea why I’ve never picked this up before - I knew it would be right up my alley; disturbing, gross, dark, religious. The internet tells me that this book invented the subgenre of feminist dystopia the way that Ursula K Le Guin invented anthropological science fiction, which I think is a fair assessment (though I can’t assert if it is actually the truth). The Handmaid’s Tale absolutely is dedicated to examining the contradictory ideological conceptions of women, especially among fundamentalist Christians: mothers, servants, property, virgins, whores. I tore through it in about a day. Margaret Atwood’s sparse, direct, yet oddly beautiful writing was so refreshing after dragging myself through the sludge of Axiom’s End. Offred is an incredibly compelling narrator, weaving the story backwards and forwards along an unknown timeline. She is about as low on the ladder as you can get within Gilead society, obviously barring those who are sent to the Colonies. I found the world of this novel incredibly interesting and disturbing, I was scraping up every minute detail Atwood put on the page. The character of Nick was so intriguing as well; his rare appearances added so much to the story and emotional world of Offred. Nick and Offred’s romance/relationship(?) brings so much heart and depth to both of them as characters…like their ability to (seemingly) truly have this escapist love affair and find relief in one another has heartbreaking sincerity inside a very cruel and unfeeling universe. I was also really into the epilogue of this book, which frames the entire novel as a set of tape recordings discovered many decades in the future, studied by scholars focused on the now-fallen nation of Gilead, being discussed and debated at an academic conference. So cool!!!

HIGHLIGHT: Nobody’s heart is perfect.

HIGHLIGHT: You've killed her, I said. She looked like an angel, solemn, compact, made of air. She was wearing a dress I'd never seen, white and down to the ground.

PAGES: 314

THE TESTAMENTS by MARGARET ATWOOD

RATING: 3 star for Aunt Lydia

SUMMARY: What if you had to destroy the only thing you were allowed to build?

COMMENTS: Margaret Atwood should have dropped the other two POVs and just let this be about Aunt Lydia. Aunt Lydia’s position in Gilead basically affords her the knowledge to tell the story of the other two POVs anyway, and her perspective was by far the most interesting, as well as the only one that felt true to/in communion with The Handmaid’s Tale. I listened to part of this on audiobook, and the narrator for Aunt Lydia’s POV is the actress who plays her in the TV adaptation. Her voice is so fitting (in my opinion) and really added to the experience! The POVs of the other two narrators, both teenage girls, comes off as bizarrely YA in a bad way. I also want to thank this book for introducing me to microdots, the greatest spy technology ever invented. I really loved the look into the administrative side of Gilead and the lives of young girls in Gilead after the mystery left behind in The Handmaid’s Tale. Definitely worth a read if you keep your expectations low for ⅔ of the narrators.

HIGHLIGHT: Love is as strong as death.

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin

rating: 3.75 stars

summary: The only way to stop being chased by your shadow is to turn around and chase it back.

comments: Hehehe I FINALLY started this series. Several people have said that I will really like the sequel (The Tombs of Atuan) so I am looking forward to that!! Overall I liked this book - it's trapped in the 3 star range forever because unfortunately it is children’s literature and I am not a child so naturally I wanted more; more darkness, more conflict, more depth. Which isn’t to say that UKLG did not expertly execute the existing darkness/conflict/depth of this book! I love true name magic fuckery. I love the weird little wizard school. I love Ged’s first wizard master that he comes to love dearly despite thinking he’s totally lame as a child. I read a review of this about how reading Earthsea at this point in time can make it feel played out, but only because UKLG invented so many wizard school/wizard tropes that are popular today. And also subverted so many things that eventually became tropes in such interesting ways. It's very clear that when this book came out, it was totally fresh - or that if this was the first kid wizard book I ever read, it would have been. And I wish it was fresh to me! But it isn't. And I STILL liked it, which is a testament to its general good-ness. Ged is a fun protag and I can’t wait to see where this series goes. Several moments genuinely touched my heart. It sounds like I’m ragging on this book but I genuinely think it was quite good!! UKLG’s imagery is as powerful as always; an endless ocean suddenly turning into sand, Ged sparring with dragons, a dilapidated shack on a tidal shoal. I also really loved that there is no Big Bad Evil. There’s no Voldemort figure, there's no nebulous, faceless force working to destroy the world. The evil Ged has to defeat is that which is already in his heart. OH URSULA I MISS YOU EVERY DAY.

highlight: 

• “For I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, ‘til you gave it back to me.”

• “I would keep you here with me, for I have what you lack, but I will not keep you against your will. Now choose between Re Albi and Roke.” / Ged stood dumb, his heart bewildered. He had come to love this man Ogion who had healed him with a touch, and who had no anger: he loved him, and had not known it until now.

• “Lord Gensher, I do not know what it was  – the thing that came out of the spell and cleaved to me –” / “Nor do I know. It has no name. You have great power inborn in you, and you used that power wrongly, to work a spell over which you had no control, not knowing how that spell affects the balance of light and dark, life and death, good and evil. And you were moved to do this by pride and by hate. Is it any wonder the result was a ruin? You summoned a spirit from the dead, but with it came one of the Powers of the unlife. Uncalled it came from a place where there are no names. Evil, it wills to work evil through you. The power you had to call it gives it power over you: you are connected. It is the shadow of your arrogance, the shadow of your ignorance, the shadow you cast. Has a shadow a name?” / Ged stood sick and haggard. He said at last, “Better I had died.” / “Who are you to judge that, you for whom Nemmerle gave his life?”

pages: 183

Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

rating: 4.25 stars

summary: If you found life from another world, could you recognize it at all?

comments: Speaker for the Dead blew my fucking mind when I was 13 years old so naturally I wanted to reread it and see how I feel now that I have critical thinking skills and the unfortunate knowledge that OSC is a raging sexist/racist/homophobe. It never fails to stun me how he is Like That and then wrote a series about how every life has value. But I digress! While reading the first half of this book something I couldn’t quite put my finger on was putting me off. Eventually I narrowed it down to a couple things. The treatment of women overall in this book (and series?) is a bit weird. Almost every adult woman who is not an ascetic monk is in love with Ender in some way by the end of the novel (Jane, Novinha, his sister in a weird fucked up way and I’m not a freak for saying this because he refers to his separation from Valentine as ‘being widowed’). Ender also sees a photo of Novinha when she is 14 and he is 30(?), ‘falls in love’ with her, and marries her at the end of the book when they are both adults because of time-space age fuckery. I was also put off by the treatment of the alien race (pequeninos) for the first 2/3rd, but that is mostly a purposeful narrative decision which highlights how the people on Lusitania don’t actually see them as equals, and is corrected. There are also a few moments where it is unclear whether it is the narrative itself or the inner monologue of Ender/other POV characters who refer to one character’s bionic eyes/blindness/disability as ‘monstrous.’ So there's all that. And yet…somehow…Speaker for the Dead still got me. I cried two times. I ended up loving Ender again after wondering if he was becoming a Gary Sue. I loved Ela, I loved all the pequeninos, I loved the climactic arc of the treaty being created. The 40-50 pages post-treaty are honestly a little boring IMO but I didn’t mind so much because of the last few pages where they finally plant the hive queen on Lusitania and Ender bawls his fucking eyes out. The reveal that Pipo and Libo’s deaths were actually the pequeninos trying to do them a high honor by thinking that humans also had a third life is soooo fucked up and good. Anyways. Ender is so compelling as a protagonist. There's probably valid criticism of how in-universe he’s the greatest military commander who ever lived, a famous prophet, and also the only person with access to the most powerful AI in the world, which gives him a bit too much deus ex machina, but who cares. It's sick as hell. Also the fact that Ender falls in love with Jane, the deviated form of an artificial intelligence porgram that was designed to psychologically torture him as a child, cannot be overlooked for its inspiredness and hilarity. 

highlights:

• “Sickness and healing are in every heart. Death and deliverance are  in every hand.” / “Human,” said the speaker, “tell your people not to grieve for what they did in ignorance.” / “It was a terrible thing,” Human said. “It was our greatest gift.”

• “Will he always come between us?” / “Yes,” Ela said. “Like a bridge, he’ll come between us.” 

• “I knew her so well that I loved her, or maybe I loved her so well that I knew her. I didn't want to fight her anymore. I wanted to quit. I wanted to go home.”

• “I imagine it feels like bathing in ice to the person touching her. But how does it feel to her? Cold as she is, it must surely burn like fire.”

A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar

rating: 5 star

summary: what if it won’t leave you alone until you put it to rest?

comments: you guys. you guys. literally the other writers aren't sofia samatar and that will NEVER be ok. this book is like tangentially related to the winged histories...in a good way!! its set a bit before it in a fascinating manner. and tialon is there! the moment when i realized that the prince’s war some characters vaguely mention wanting to go fight in is dasya’s...PAIN. anyways. in this book the main character falls in love with a ghost/angel he is also being haunted by, AND that haunting ultimately snowballs into a massive uncontrollable political/religious disaster for the entire country of olondria. its amazing. jevick is a wonderful protagonist...his is a fascinating perspective to be saddled with! im writing these comments too long after i finished this (back in utah) to fully articulate how much i love it but seriously i couldn’t put it down. miss samatar i love you so much. prose was drop dead gorgeous as always.

highlights: 

• Tears filled my eyes. The desire to confide in him made me tremble. / “What is your trouble?” he whispered. / “A dead thing. Something dead.” / He leaned close, urgent. “An angel?” / Yes. Yes, I said. An angel.  

• The sound of something shifting inside the box knocked at my heart; my hands were sweating, and when I had positioned the coffin I wiped them on my coat. The house observed me, silent. Miros and Auram were there, but no one looked out; they had left me to complete this ritual alone. I am the last thing you will see, I said in my heart. I am the last, I have carried you in my arms, I have brought you home.

pages: 304

Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

rating: 4 stars???

summary: what if there was gender. and violence.

comments: i literally cannot articulate what happened to me when i read this book. i finished it in one day and then just sat there in silence looking at the brick wall outside my window. narrator/main character is (intentionally) unbelievably insufferable but the writing is so fresh and funny that i never minded. eliza clark YOUR INSANE and i need your hand in marriage NOW. btw basically every content warning imaginable on this one

highlights: 

• He’s a vision in polyester, he’s a checkout movie star; he’s the Oscar Isaac of random boys who work in Tesco.

• It isn't him. It never is.

pages: 217

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

rating: 5 star

summary: what if jesuit priests went to space and it wasnt fun?

comments: okay well im obsessed with this now. this book has my number in the sense that a) it’s essentially anthropological science fiction, b) the protagonist is a linguist, c) it’s a first contact story and d) there is gross body horror and stuff gets Dark. since reading dune last year i have been enjoying sci fi that interrogates religion quite a bit (partially because imo sci fi is extremely well equipped to do so) but have been putting off the sparrow for a while, in that weird way where i knew i would love it but wasn’t ready yet? well i was right and i do love this…i love emilio sandoz as a protagonist and i loved every other main character to bits too. i especially loved the crisis of faith that basically glues this book together. there’s an ongoing disagreement between characters in this book about why god gets credit for good things that happen, but none of the blame for the bad, which culminates devastatingly into; if god is real and all this terrible stuff happened, he must answer for that. which is way more compelling than just wondering if god is real or not. the authors writing is so easy to read but still clever and entertaining and cutting…i can’t put my finger on why though!!! also the framing device of half the chapters morning forward through the mission to space while the other half look backwards on it as emilio is questioned about what happened after returning is soooo great….very I’m Telling You What Is Going To Happen Right Now On Page One And You Will Still Be Shocked and Appalled by These Events as They Occur. i also want to credit the author for having an actual serious grasp on linguistics!! the language puzzles and discussions that happened in this book were very entertaining for me. content warnings for body horror involving hands and general illness, rape, and sex trafficking if you are looking to pick this one up. if your threshold for being uncomfortable/disturbed isnt super high you probably shouldnt read this

highlight: 

• Now you have to live with knowing. But it was my body. It was my blood. And it was my love. 

• He thought sometimes of the peculiar peacefulness he’d experienced towards the end of the voyage back, watching blood seep from his hands and thinking, This will kill me, and then I can stop trying to understand. 

• “Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine,” Vincenzo Giuliani said quietly. “Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it.” / “But still, the sparrow falls,” Felipe said. 

pages: 496

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

rating: 3.25 stars

summary: what if you knew god and he died

comments: this may as well be titled DUNE For People Who Didn’t Understand DUNE. and i mean that as a compliment. basically if you got tricked into thinking paul is a Good Guy in dune this book is here to be like, just in case you didn’t notice, this guy started a religious cult and then used it to exact revenge over familial disputes which eventually resulted in the deaths of 60 million people. haha. there is an interesting aspect re: paul's ability to see futures, so all this terrible stuff is justified via paul's knowledge that its the least awful path available to take, but. still doesn't make him a good guy! not sure what it makes him really. anyways this was weird but fun in the same ways dune was…#PaulAtreidesIsOverParty i think its epic and hilarious that he walked off into the desert to die at the end. duncan idaho’s corpse being reanimated and given as a gift to paul wildly entertaining as well. too much discussion of incest and having babies but thats just frank herbert for you i guess.

highlight: 

• Here lies a toppled god – his fall was not a small one. We did but build his pedestal, a narrow and a tall one.

pages: 334