Book Review: The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Book #248 of 2017:

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

This Pulitzer-winning novel speaks powerfully of all the ways that people can be boxed in and abused by society, particularly poor black women in the rural south. Its epistolary format is ideal for carrying the raw emotion of its heroine as she struggles to find beauty and meaning in her life, and author Alice Walker’s use of dialect is a bold choice that pays dividends in establishing her character throughout the book. (I personally could have used some quotation marks, as it’s sometimes hard to track which character is speaking at any given time, but Celie’s letters do feel more authentic without them.)

There are so many layers and facets to this narrative, but I was particularly struck by the subtle ways that Walker builds up Celie’s attraction to women, which in many ways the character doesn’t even have the language to express. It’s an instant classic, and quite rightfully so.

★★★★☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Book #247 of 2017:

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

I have such mixed feelings about this book, which essentially aims to be Black Lives Matter: the novel. It’s important, and I’m so glad that it exists and has become a bestseller. I love that it’s going to introduce some readers to the widespread injustice of police shootings and provide insight into how a person and their wider community might react to an innocent friend getting gunned down in front of them. Fiction is a great tool for getting inside someone else’s mind, and I can fully believe there are some young readers out there who won’t really understand the tragedy behind all the hashtagged black names until they see it from the inside of a novel like this.

With that being said, I think the book is more important for what it represents than it is a great story in its own right. There are too many exchanges that feel like didactic preaching rather than natural dialogue, especially between the narrator and her clueless white classmates, and too many character arcs that just boil down to a person becoming more woke. It also seems like the ripped-from-the-headlines angle boxes the author in, to the point where there’s practically a checklist of things that have to happen and not enough space for the story to really surprise us. In the end I still liked it, but it was not nearly as revelatory as I had hoped.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Shardik by Richard Adams

Book 246 of 2017:

Shardik by Richard Adams (Beklan Empire #1)

I loved this 1974 story of a Stone Age civilization treating a giant bear as the incarnation of their god, a sprawling feat of worldbuilding that feels wholly different from the author’s better-known classic Watership Down. It’s slow but engaging, and I appreciate the ambiguity that its title animal can be read as either a divine agent or not. This is a fantasy story with no overt magic, set in a prehistory so deep it may as well be another world, and it carries an epic feel as though it really were a surviving relic of those times. The prose can be a little clunky to modern ears, and the story could certainly have been tightened up, but this is a tome that really rewards readers for falling into its world.

★★★★☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: The Boy on the Bridge by M.R. Carey

Book #245 of 2017:

The Boy on the Bridge by M.R. Carey

Among the great strengths of author M.R. Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts are its unique viewpoint character and the gradual way that it eases readers into some key realizations about her world. But given those strengths, it’s hard not to feel let down by this follow-up prequel The Boy on the Bridge, which is far more conventional and straightforward while echoing many of the overall plot points from the original novel.

Reading these books in chronological order would rob The Girl with All the Gifts of some of its impact (especially given the short epilogue to The Boy on the Bridge that jumps forward in time to after that other book), but reading them in publication order just makes this one seem like a weaker copy. Perhaps a third novel would alter that dynamic, but for now, The Boy on the Bridge feels pretty inessential.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston

Book #244 of 2017:

Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston

Fiction about rape can easily turn maudlin, but E. K. Johnston has written a tightly-focused story of a high school cheerleader who refuses to consider herself a victim, even as she struggles to overcome the trauma. It’s a tricky balance, and sensitive readers may wish to give this book a pass, but its strong female friendships and nuanced understanding of the different ways people can respond to an assault help elevate the material. Reclaiming a feeling of power can be an important aspect of the healing process, and Johnston explores that with great compassion.

★★★★☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman

Book #243 of 2017:

La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman (The Book of Dust #1)

A fairly underwhelming prequel to Philip Pullman’s classic His Dark Materials trilogy, La Belle Sauvage consists mainly of characters trading custody of the baby Lyra Belacqua like a tiny squalling MacGuffin. There’s too much focus on setting up the events of the original series (and presumably the rest of this new trilogy, which will reportedly take place after His Dark Materials), and not enough effort to tell a compelling independent story in its own right. It’s still Pullman, so it isn’t awful, but it all feels pretty inessential nonetheless. If lightsabers and blasters were enough to make you like The Phantom Menace, alethiometers and dæmons will likely have the same effect here, but such trappings largely fail to recapture the magic.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo

Book #242 of 2017:

Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo (Grisha #2)

Two books in, I’m still pretty lukewarm on this trilogy. It’s good enough to keep reading, especially for the extra background on author Leigh Bardugo’s superior semi-sequel series Six of Crows, but far too much time is spent on the main character’s love triangle with an evil abuser and a jealous sulking man-baby, neither of whom Bardugo has convinced me is anything special. The plot too is fine but not groundbreaking, without much to elevate it above its YA fantasy tropes. (One new character is a rare breath of fresh air, but he’s not a major enough presence in the text to make up for the rest. And I’m not too excited about a love triangle becoming a love quadrangle, either.) Hopefully the last book will bridge the quality gap between the rest of the trilogy and Six of Crows, but at this point, I’m not exactly holding my breath.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor

Book #241 of 2017:

Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone #2)

The first novel in this trilogy grew on me as it went along, its early Twilight trappings of a high school girl falling in love with a beautiful inhuman stranger giving way to something rich and dark and magical. I ended that book excited for the rest of the trilogy, and this first sequel didn’t let me down. It’s a fierce war story that empathizes with soldiers on both sides of the conflict, and the textured worldbuilding that author Laini Taylor built up over the course of the previous volume pays dividends here as she all but leaves her characters’ regular human lives behind.

Readers expecting another love story might feel disappointed by this novel, which keeps Taylor’s starcrossed romantics on separate sides of the deepening rift between their peoples, still bound by their shared dream of ending the war but devastated by the scars of their pained history together. Nevertheless, it’s a fantastic story of anguish and duty that escalates to a fever pitch by the end. It may have seemed unlikely at the start of this trilogy, but Taylor has built something truly wonderful here, and I can’t wait to see how it ends.

★★★★★

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Something from the Nightside by Simon R. Green

Book #240 of 2017:

Something from the Nightside by Simon R. Green (Nightside #1)

I loved Simon R. Green’s Nightside series back in high school, when it was my first introduction to the urban fantasy genre. These books tell hardboiled detective stories in a weird world of gods and monsters, sort of like a cross between Sin City and Welcome to Night Vale, and that’s still a setting rich with possibility.

Unfortunately, this first book in the series doesn’t hold up so well on a reread over a decade later. There’s a lot of telling and not showing, and the plot is largely just a movement from one set piece to the next. I’m hoping the sequels will hold more of the magic that first drew me into this world, but in this initial outing, the Nightside is kind of a dud.

★★☆☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Movie Review: Big Trouble (2002)

Movie #21 of 2017:

Big Trouble (2002)

This is a family favorite, but it had been several years since I watched it last. Sometimes things like that can age poorly, but this one is still great, and the comedy holds up really well. I’m always surprised that this movie isn’t better known, but I guess it was doomed by a bland title and for making fun of airport security so soon after 9/11 (although it was technically written and filmed well before). It’s a zany comedy about absurd characters in Miami, and it’s well worth seeking out if you’ve never seen it before. If nothing else, it’s got a great cast that includes a young Zooey Deschanel at her most un-adorkable ever.

★★★★★

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started