moonytoast's reviews
268 reviews

The world of Bone Weaver explicitly pulls from a wide breadth of Slavic folklore and the history of early twentieth-century imperial imperial Russia. Even though this book is not a historical fantasy in the same manner of The City Beautiful, it’s very easy to notice those historical influences on the story. I personally enjoyed this book more—perhaps because fantasy with historical influences is less rigid in the atmosphere you can create and worlds you can build compared to historical fiction with fantasy elements. In that respect, this reminds me of Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse books and even The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid. 

I loved all three of the characters in the main ensemble, but Toma definitely has my heart. Her commitment to finding and saving her sister, Galina, creates an immediate emotional depth even beyond Toma’s slow unraveling of her past before she found family among upryi. I love her dynamic with Vanya and Mikhail in that feels fully realized. Their interactions feel like three people with entirely different life experiences and perspectives on the world who have stumbled into a quest together. I don’t want to spoil the third act and a certain event, but I love that we get to see how much they care about each other in the wake of everything they’ve gone through together. 

 

I had only one substantial qualm with Bone Weaver that made this go from a five star to a four star rating: I felt like the resolution wrapped up a bit too quickly in regards to the politics. Polydoros set up a very nuanced and complex political landscape for most of the book, not just with the peripheral events the characters pass through but also with the conversational clashes between Vanya and Mikhail on those matters.

The conclusion of that arc where Vanya trusts Mikhail to be capable of solving these issues simply because he will not be like his father and that he is a good man falls a bit flat to me. It feels like it’s not fully reckoning with the fact that the problems we saw throughout the book are bigger than the tsar or the Tribunal. That being said, I do appreciate that it’s made clear that there is a staggering amount of work that needs to be done before they could reach a semblance of justice—and that killing Koschei did not solve everything.

Definitely recommend this for anyone who enjoys young adult fantasy books like the Grishaverse or even historical fantasies set in the nineteenth or early twentieth century!

 A little thing you may not know about me: I love a girl with a sword. 

 

Squire is exactly that and more—a story about a girl who feels out of place due to her identity, a coming of age tale, and a deconstruction of colonialism set against the backdrop of a pseudo-medieval fantasy world inspired by Jordan and other areas of the Middle East. 

 

I could honestly gush about the illustration for this entire review, but I will try to keep it brief in the interest of word count. The world of Squire is infused with a gorgeous palate and I love how the illustrations of the main character, Aiza, give her such vibrant expressiveness. There was clearly a good amount of research that went into creating this comic, particularly on the aspect of architecture, which I loved. 
 

The story, at its core, is pretty simple. I think that the comic format manages to elevate this story in a great way, but for those who might be expecting more complexity from its plot elements, this will probably not be the book you are looking to read. As many graphic novels, this story flies by quickly and you can probably read it all in one sitting. 

 

I appreciate the more open but hopeful ending—the problem is clearly not resolved by the conclusion, but we have witnessed these characters learn and grow and they’re on the path towards a better future. Nothing is wrapped up in a simple bow, because war is never that simple. 

This book and Ava Reid’s The Wolf and the Woodsman have really opened my eyes to the existence and beautiful complexity of Jewish fantasy and stories infused with Jewish mythology. In The City Beautiful, Alter Rosen is possessed by the dybbuk of a close friend, who was one of a number of young Jewish boys disappearing or dying under mysterious circumstances under the shadow of the 1892 World’s Fair in Chicago. (It admittedly suffers from one of my bookish pet peeves—first person narration in a historical setting—but I will be forgiving in this case because of how well I enjoyed the story.)

Perfect for fans of Aiden Thomas’ Cemetery Boys and Roshani Chokshi’s The Gilded Wolves, The City Beautiful has proven itself to be a great addition to the budding young adult historical fantasy genre and cemented my interest in Polydoros’ future works. 

I fell in love with Light from Uncommon Stars a mere two minutes into my listening to the audiobook. I absolutely adore the narrator, Cindy Kay, who has such an airy quality to their voice that just feels like I’m hearing the internal monologue of the characters or like being told a story by a close friend. It suits the writing style very well and really brings the words to life in a way that elevates the story, which can be difficult given the weird aspects of the story and isn’t always the case with audiobook productions. 

The narrative structure is third-person limited and primarily switches between the three main characters—Shizuka Satomi, Katrina Nguyen, and Lan Tran—which gives us the space to really learn and understand these characters, their dreams and motivations. Accompanied by Aoki's gorgeous and melodic writing, the story manages to seamlessly switch between point of views mid-chapter or, in some cases, mid-paragraph. Even with a single narrator, Cindy Kay does a solid job of distinguishing these characters, especially within their dialogue. 

In my experience, books that don’t stick to one singular point of view can fall flat in one particular way. This is when one character is far less interesting than the others and readers then get tired of their narration, when they could be spending more time with characters that are more interesting and engaged in more interesting plots. (A primary example: The Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan.) Ryka Aoki deftly avoids this by creating three genuinely compelling characters at the center of this story that gradually become entangled with each other’s lives.

The real standout character is, undoubtedly, Katrina Nguyen, a down-on-her-luck violinist with no formal training who has run away from her abusive family that mistreats her because of the fact that she's trans. When Shizuka finds her playing Schradieck at the park, Katrina is couch-surfing at a former friend's place that's not all it's cracked up to be... which she only leaves once her violin is stolen and sold to a pawn shop by that friend. This is a character who has endured so much pain and suffering at the hands of strangers and supposed loved ones alike. We see how that trauma and internalized transphobia has impacted her... the way she constantly apologizes almost on instinct, the way she continuously questions how okay Shizuka really is with the fact she's trans, the way she has one foot out the door in case she makes even the tiniest mistake. The writing along with the narration make the reader's experience of the character incredibly visceral: mumbling and stumbling over her words in a constant state of vigilant fear, dripping with the anxiety wrought by past trauma. This makes her growth and the culmination of her character arc at the Golden Friendship Violin Competition all the more impactful. 

I also love the dynamic built between Shizuka and Katrina. Shizuka went from choosing Katrina as her seventh student with the full intention of giving her soul over to Tremon Philippe in order to save her own soul and her music—to willingly sacrificing herself for Katrina. Not because of Katrina's music, but simply because she wants Katrina to live. She loves this girl as though she's her own child and would give anything for her. At the end, you can feel Shizuka's pride in her final student bleed off the pages. 

I can't say this book is for everyone. Some may find the plot sparse, pacing slow, and the narrative meandering. After all, this feels less like a fun contemporary sci-fi/fantasy romp and more an intensively earnest character study tucked into a fascinating world... but it's one of the best speculative fiction books I've ever read. 

It's a meditation on resiliency, transformation, and the importance of a life. This is best encompassed in Shizuka's internal monologue during her final performance on Earth before Tremon intends to claim her soul: 

one of the most genuine, raw memoirs i’ve read… as someone who grew up watching icarly it’s devastating to know how much jennette was suffering, abused behind the scenes by her mother and exploited by hollywood

glad to know that she’s in a better place now and yeah, that title is 1000% justified

i don't think there's ever been a more apt time to read this series than right now.... RTC

I still am unsure of how I feel about this book. 

It’s a very dense, slow sci-fi with long “travelogue” sequences that help to build a richly complex and vivid world while also examining the nature of Gethenian ‘ambisexual’ anatomy. Right off the bat, The Left Hand of Darkness has a dense but lush sense of world-building — similar to Frank Herbert’s Dune,* but with a much preferred writing style. 

The narrative is reserved to a primarily first-person perspective that switches between both our Envoy, Genly Ai, and his advocate and eventual traitor-turned-travel-companion, Estraven, with the occasional break in order to provide the reader with certain folklore and stories from the world of Winter. In doing so, it avoids what I would call the Frustrating Omnipotence™ of Frank Herbert, whose writing style tends to lean a bit heavy on telling the reader exactly what each character is thinking in every moment as though we are inside their head and experiencing those thoughts as the character. 

That being said: if you’re coming into this story for character work or a more extensive interrogation of how mankind can build connections across different sociological perspectives, then you may be slightly disappointed. Genly Ai and Estraven have an interesting relationship dynamic which morphs throughout the course of the story, but on their own they aren’t the most compelling characters. If you’re not prepared for a VERY, VERY slow burn of a sci-fi book, then you will probably hate this. 

Personally, I think I might have to give this a reread in order to have a more definite take on this book, but I am glad that this introduced me to the subgenre of speculative fiction referred to as queernorm, which includes such entries as Sing the Four Quarters by Tanya Huff and Avalon by Mary J. Jones. 

full disclosure: i bought this because i found it in a bookstore around the time that broey deschanel uploaded a youtube video analyzing the original series of Sex and the City and i saw that there's a chapter in this book also dedicated to an analysis of the series. have i ever watched Sex and the City? no. but trust that i will always EAT UP leftist/anarchist analyses of random tv shows i have never watched in my life!

i think this is one of those nonfiction books that you happen to stumble upon at just the right moment for it to have a maximal impact. in the past few years, it's become increasingly clear about how much the State has failed everyday americans and marginalized communities. in the past month, we've seen the biggest push against numerous civil rights and protections from the U.S. Supreme Court in decades, when multiple of these justices were placed on the court by a president who lost the popular vote. and the list goes on... to the point that this book feels more relevant now than in 2012 when it was first published.

as most works of collected essays from multiple authors go, some essays can be just hit or miss. here's some of the standout chapters from this book (in my opinion):