storyorc's reviews
644 reviews

Only read Family Furnishing (titular short). Read due to Munro's daughter coming out with her abuse story. Uncomfortably relatable flawed main character who wasn't particularly nice but was very believable.

The Atlas series continues to be frustrating but not without merit. For every eye-roll ("But its hot and I am le tired") and baffling moment ("He'd never understood British currency"), there's a beat of fun dialogue ("I might actually like you" "Don't worry, [i]t'll pass.") and a tug on the heartstrings ("Did you really think I could only love you if your hands were clean?").  As always, we see the shapes of intriguing ethical questions and interpersonal dynamics but their foundations are so wobbly that they often fizzle out into a paragraph of internal monologue that sounds pretty but says very little.

If you make it through those paragraphs, however, this final installment does deliver on the drama -

Parisa's mixed mourning of her husband, Dalton's Parisa doll,  Nico's heart-to-heart with Libby about finding each other in any universe and his subsequent death, Callum shooting Dalton, Libby almost shooting Callum, Tristan's dad actually shooting Callum

. I can't promise the emotions will be satisfying or even completely clear, but they will be heightened. And kinda horny.

What I really want to talk about is the acknowledgements. 

In the part of the book most people use to thank their cats, Blake sets fire to authorly mystique and tells us exactly what she's been trying to show us for three books: 
 

Reading this took the teeth out of my gripes with the series. The characters' extreme apathy is easier to bear knowing they're supposed to be avatars for how an unjust world makes you want to throw up your hands. I can make my peace with flimsy plot and worldbuilding with this confirmation that they were never meant to be more than vehicles for the Romance. Maybe all that style-over-substance rumination is like that not because of pretentiousness but a consequence of how hard it is to grapple with apathy and our own insignificance and come out with anything clear and meaningful.

The Atlas trilogy, weighed down by its ponderous flaws, is more of an imprint of the emotional highs and lows I was hoping for than the real things but that imprint is more intriguing and daring than many a more coherent story. I'm grateful Blake had the courage and discipline to try and personify some of the big, harrowing questions of our time in six of the worst classmates you could possibly imagine.

These hot idiots remain stuck in their frustrating ways but I can excuse it for the spectacle of 500-year-old fae lords hurling slut accusations at each other across a war room. Another heaping (too heaping, frankly) helping of exactly what the previous books offered - horny melodrama.
 
Do our heroes still spend negotiations flip-flopping between feigning boredom to show how cool they are and snarling self-righteously at the slightest insult to their mates? Yes. Is that hot bad boy about to drop a backstory that retroactively justifies all his misdeeds? Absolutely. Are these books still determined to bring wingplay to the masses? Are they ever! Do I still stop skimming whenever Lucien's name pops up? Maybe so.

After only a billion pages, we also get confirmation that faeries can be gay. LGBTQ rep rears its head twice; first, in a way that had me wary about bi stereotypes and then again in a 6-page jump scare near the end. It's definitely... there. 

Onto more exciting surprises: 

These books are what they are. If you've made it this far, you'll like Wings & Ruin too. God himself could not force me to read that Christmas special sequel though. Unless Lucien features heavily.

C.L. Clark takes great care in their exploration of the mindset of a child stolen from her country by its colonisers, trained, and then brought back as a soldier to subdue it decades later. Tourraine's loyalties to both worlds stretch her to pieces on every page of her narration and her muddied actions reflect that. Even as you wince at her choices, you hope for her success.

If that makes up about half the focus, the rest is split between a rich North Africa-inspired fantasy setting, complete with a cast of homey rebels, and a simmering romance between Tourraine and the princess of the nation oppressing her. The power imbalance is not lost on either of them, and causes a believable level of conflict where many other books would sweep it under the rug. The princess, Luca, is neither cackling evil, nor some paragon of good rulership. Most of her cabinet of adversaries and advisors are similarly layered individuals, though a couple do get stuck with the short end of the characterisation stick as unredeemable assholes.

More interesting still, is that the rebels echo this complexity. They are presented as the good guys, not the perfect guys. Thankfully, they also don't fall into the (cough MCU cough) trope of having one person 'go too far' so that we can feel better about liking the sympathetic oppressor characters either. When the rebels use violence, they treat is seriously but there is no hand-wringing or fears of becoming 'as bad as them'. Their righteousness is for Tourraine and the reader to judge. 'The Jackal' is especially interesting, as their most violent member who is at the same time inspiring and clever, and has very mixed feelings about trusting the stolen children.

My only complaint is an occasional indistinctness in the narration. A few events were difficult to parse out exactly what happened and some things happened off-page that felt like they really should have played out in front of us. I also failed to follow all the political machinations, though you could cry skill issue there. Finally, Tourraine's ruminations circled so tightly around the conflict between her homeland and Luca that I often lost sight of her loyalty to her soldiers. Clark goes to great pains to characterise them whenever they do show up (though I didn't see much to like in Pruett if I'm honest) and I expect they're meant to be Tourraine's touchstone the whole way through. However, it seemed like Tourraine's actions put them in danger as much as spared them from it. Perhaps that is just what happens when a conflicted person is faced with only bad options.

Good representation for sapphic romance (queernorm setting!), women in general (most of the people of authority are), and disability (Luca has chronic pain due to a severely damaged leg).

Readers of The Masquerade (Baru Comorant) series may especially enjoy this look into an equivalent tale told from the perspective of an ordinary foot soldier instead of a political genius.

The sort of story that would be called inspiration porn if it wasn't a true account. Also stands in shining opposition to the popular feeling that humanity goes to the dogs in times of scarcity and crisis. 

My only unease lies in how vividly the story is told. Either the old sailors were very thorough poets in their diaries and interviews, or a good helping of artistic license was employed. It does not make the story any less worth hearing but the question of authenticity did linger in my mind during the listening. 

Lansing does criticise the men on occasion though so it is not wholly rosy. I left with an unfavourable impression of Shackleton's ego even as I had to admire his practicality and grit. Worsley comes out of it looking best in my opinion but the crew was full of characters.

Perhaps a short tangent about the Endurance's sister ship, the Aurora, which was charged with setting supply caches for the aborted polar trek and did not escape quite so luckily, would have added some balance too.

Extremely vivid and thrilling though, even when read in the summer heat, and really makes you feel the spirit of adventure. The details of their ingenuity and seamanship are a wonderful bonus.

Donna Tartt's reading is a delight everyone deserves to hear.

I had enjoyed both films and assumed the book would hold nothing in particular for me because of it and I have seldom been so wrong in my life. The terminator has nothing on Mattie Ross. Her tenacity and practically is a gift to all, and an especial gift to little girls who fall shy of feminine ideals. She would be an utter pain in the ass to deal with and watching various men, nice and nasty alike, be forced to do so will have you kicking your feet in glee. This also serves to slyly endear Mattie to the reader so that we, like her impromptu marshal and Texas Ranger guardians/business partners, are put in real fear on the handful of occasions she comes to danger. A fantastic adventure for all ages.

Note that while Mattie is relatively progressive in her views on Indigenous, Mexican, and Black people, as well as immigrants and the Civil War, their treatment in this book does reflect the time in which it was written (1968), and set (1877). 

A very kind walk through many stories of plants' uses and struggles, complete with fascinating botanical factoids and very helpful calls to action with exercises you can do to align your life more with the teachings in the book. The section on reframing resource consumption as a gift economy was especially transformative. Good for adults old and young.

Despite being an alternate Earth setting, Kushiel's Dart demands you set aside your idea of morals and norms more than many a fantasy novel bursting with magic and fanciful landscapes. D'Angeline culture systematically grooms children for careers in sex work, auctions off virginities at fancy parties, and sees nothing wrong in otherwise very likeable people sleeping with those whom they have a huge amount of power over. It also doesn't blink at queerness and is built around the radical commandment to "love as thou wilt". These positives and negatives are explored at a character level too: Phèdre is enthusiastic about her job as a prostitute/spy but is clear with her beloved master that he is not her friend, and is very aware that even though he invites her to decline clients, she is not truly free to choose.

Although there are only a couple instances of literal magic in the story, it is best to view the D'Angeline beauty and sex as magic. They are literally descended from angels. Characters of other cultures often respond to them as if bewitched and the D'Angeline bend wills and learn secrets through seduction as much as through political maneuvering. This could easily become ridiculous (and there are times when it does verge on it) but, like enchanting faeries in folklore of old, the D'Angeline are bound by their own rules. Phèdre is a victim of her own desires as much as she uses her appeal for influence, and even villains fall prey to their own lusts at times. This also applies to honour. Even D'Angeline traitors and thieves have some sliver of a noble spirit that can be played to, as if they were all beautiful actors in a grand tale. It's an interesting look at the drawbacks of pinning your whole culture on chivalric ideals of beauty, love, and honour.

The book is almost as interested in beauty on a line-level as its characters are and the flowery language for the most part enhances the feeling of being told a romantic tale of heroines and knights. Carey finds a way to breathe life into her descriptions of parties and gowns long after I would have thought I'd grow numb to them. Phèdre is constantly finding beauty in people and things that other narrators would skim past, even in people who abuse her or foreigners her countrymen find ugly. She does so partly by finding something to respect in their personalities but, markedly, will also usually highlight an aspect of their physical features, too so it is not just a cop-out 'they have a beautiful soul' kind of thing. At first, I dismissed Phèdre as overly obsessed with aesthetics but her showing us the beauty in everyone is what makes it so painful to see them do evil, or endure it. I had so much more anguish and heartache and love for the characters of in this book than I expected.

Perhaps more even than the character work and political plot machinations, this book is interested in the intersection of love and pain. One is never far behind the other. The world Carey has crafted demands equally that people love and that they suffer for that love, to the point that Phèdre's identity as the once-in-a-generation anguisette (sexual masochist) takes on the space that would be occupied by a farm-boy Chosen One in any other novel. If that subject matter interests you at all, I can't think of another popular fictional work as invested in the question of whether pain is necessary - even good for - love.

As if the softly magical archipelago world and beloved-bedtime-story-prose weren't lovely enough, this journey is also kind to its protagonist, Ged, as navigates his very relatable fumbles with pride and fear of death.  For all his faults, Ged does manage to make his found family of some of the Earthsea's most gentle and wise characters. The resolution is exciting not only for its action but because it leaves us with a sense of wild promise and possibility for ourselves too. A masterclass in exploring fears and encouraging children without talking down to them or softening consequences.