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The Vegetarian by Han Kang
I’ve been terribly unsuccessful when it comes to reading books lately, which is partly due to me having a new job that tends to be exhausting and also due to me being more (socially) active. Plus, I’ve started doing Yoga and am basically trying to live a healthier, more balanced life where I’m more aware of myself, my possibilities and my limits. Radical self-care just turns out to be a wonderful thing, and cooking your own food is so yummy that I can’t believe I didn’t bother doing it any sooner.
So, uh, okay, why am I telling you this? Well, it’s a fair question but the truth is I’m not that sure. Maybe it’s because in some tiny way the book I’ll be reviewing today has to do with that, or rather, I might not have remembered wanting to read The Vegetarian by Han Kang at all if it hadn’t been for that Vegan lifestyle magazine I held in my hands a week ago.
That, and I’m such a sucker for pretty covers.
Before the nightmare, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary life. But when splintering, blood-soaked images start haunting her thoughts, Yeong-hye decides to purge her mind and renounce eating meat. In a country where societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye’s decision to embrace a more “plant-like” existence is a shocking act of subversion. And as her passive rebellion manifests in ever more extreme and frightening forms, scandal, abuse, and estrangement begin to send Yeong-hye spiraling deep into the spaces of her fantasy. In a complete metamorphosis of both mind and body, her now dangerous endeavor will take Yeong-hye—impossibly, ecstatically, tragically—far from her once-known self altogether.
To be honest with you, the reason I picked up this book was because I thought it was going to be a feminist story about a usually demure woman defying what’s expected of her by embracing a life of vegetarism (or, as it turns out, veganism) in a society obsessed with eating meat. And if you squint, or if you only read the first part of its three-parts story structure, The Vegetarian does offer that, in a way, but then again, maybe not really.
Point is: I’m not entirely sure. This book certainly left me confused, and like some other readers, once I was done with it, I didn’t actually get it. It’s a weird book and not what I expected it to be, and while there were some interesting parts in it, it was also a disappointment in its own way.
The book is told in three separate parts, none of which are told from Yeong-hye’s perspective, but rather from her husband’s (part 1, The Vegetarian), her brother-in-law’s (part 2, Mongolian Mark) and her sister’s (part 3, Flamming Trees). Of course this means you never actually get to be inside Yeong-hye’s head, which is interesting, especially since the happenings in the book span over a timeline of years, rather than say, days.
Truth be told, in the end I think this book is much more about mental illness and abuse and how it affects people throughout their lives, and how different people deal with these things in different ways than it is about defying society’s expectations. Indeed, it’s much more about how society and the circumstances in your life can bring you to your knees and what that kind of pressure does to all different kinds of people.
So yeah, The Vegetarian is definitely not a light book. I didn’t expect it to be, anyway. What I wanted it to be, though, and this I confess, is more powerful than it actually was. I found it depressing in a way I wasn’t prepared for. Also, for only being about 200 pages long, the story turned out to be really slow-paced once I was finished with the first part.
All in all, I’m glad I read this book and ventured into the contemporary/literary fiction genre, as I don’t usually do it. Plus, it’s a book taking place in South Korea written by a Korean author, which is nice. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was the first Korean book I ever read, so there!
Rating: 3/5 stars
The Write Faster, Write Smarter Series by Chris Fox
Rosey: He has a new book in that series coming out June 30th and I can’t decide if I’m gonna buy it or not >_>
Dany: Which one is it?
Rosey: Relaunching your book or something like that
Dany: Ah, okay.
Rosey: On the one hand, I don’t need it currently. On the other hand… I probably will x____x I can’t seem to find the right market. *flops*
Dany: Nooooo. *cuddles* I mean, the book is probably gonna be short again, so reading it isn’t going to take up much of our time but yeah. I don’t know either. I really enjoyed the ones I’ve read, but my problem is that I actually need to write more before I can think about publishing. I mean, it is good to think about marketing beforehand, obviously, and the market, and I actually liked doing those exercises because it gave me more of an idea about how things work, but yes. For me it’s learn how to write consistently > marketing right now.
Rosey: Yeaaaaah *stares at self* Getting things done is hard /has written maybe 1000 words in the past five days
Dany: Aww. That’s 1000 more than I did 😦
Rosey: *cuddles* You’ve been busy! And aren’t working to a deadline *stares as June vanishes* x____x
Dany: Time is moving waaaay too fast.
Rosey: It really is!
Rosey: Did you like the 5000 words per hour one? Oh wait, no that wasn’t the one that I didn’t like.
Dany: I think so. I liked all the ones I read but I haven’t read them all (yet)
Rosey: Lifelong Writing Habit was the one that I was very meh on cause it didn’t really offer anything… useful. The other ones had useful exercises and thoughts. Lifelong Writing Habit was more like “change your attitude to this exact way!”. Well not “exact”. He did say it might not work for everyone but it felt way less useful than the others.
Dany: That’s the one I haven’t read but yeah, not everything is applicable
Rosey: It was just jarring, because most of his other stuff is pretty applicable.
… Anything else?
Rosey: Hmm, I can probably add that reading these in January is the reason I’m publishing in July, even if I still don’t have the right market etc
Dany: Ah, that’s good. I would like to add that his books definitely seem to be the most useful to me when it comes to the topic of self-publishing and marketing especially. Like, I would totally recommend Chris Fox to someone who wanted to know more about self-publishing and what comes with it.
Rosey: Yes! He also seems to be very positive about the experience
Dany: Yeah! And that’s _really_ nice.
Rosey: Like, he admits it’s hard work, but if you’re willing to put in the work, then it can be great cause it’s about making connections with other people.
Dany: ‘Cause you end up taking some of that positivity with you, I think.
Rosey: Yes!
Dany: Yes. 100% Agreed.
Dany’s rating: 4.5/5 stars
Rosey’s rating: 4.5/5 stars
How To Tame Your Duke by Juliana Gray
“I keep forgetting is my turn for Robots Read,” I said to Dany this morning. Seems like it shouldn’t be that hard to remember, but I have now forgotten it three times since then.
Luckily, I just remembered again and am ready to talk about… well I’m going to talk about something that drove me crazy when I read this book:
I’m not actually going to talk about the plot, so you don’t need to worry about knowing what happens. I’m going to be discussing the mistake the author kept making and why I think it happens.
Here’s an example of what happens: We’re reading, interested in what’s going to happen! Emilie is riding a horse with her soon to be step son, BUT there is word out that the men who have been after our heroine for the entire book, are in the countryside. We’re left with a sense of tension — the pair are about to go around a corner and THERE IS A FLICKER OF MOVEMENT.
By now we’re all expecting the bad guys to appear and for there to be quite a fast paced scene with a chase. There may even be a chance that our heroine will get captured and spirited away, never getting the chance to tell the hero, and employer, that she’s been masquerading as a man. WHAT WILL HAPPEN?
As you rise to the edge of your seat, you are prepared
And then you turn the page, and we’re back with the hero, who is bumbling around and yelling for his son to show up.
Okay, you think, giving the benefit of the doubt to the book. Surely something exciting will happen here, something worth tearing us away from the expected chase for. Plus, it builds tension. You settle in.
And then Emilie walks in the door with her soon to be step son, and they say, very briefly, that they were chased.
Wait, WHAT?
The build up to the chase, and the break away were supposed to build tension. There was going to be a fun chase scene with lots of wild riding, and a daring leap over a canyon (… okay, probably a ditch) and instead we’re sent sprawling into the scene between the hero and heroine.
This happened a couple of times in the book. It was only this bad once, but there were other times when the author cut away from the action only to break it all down in the next scene.
“TERRIBLE!” you cry angrily (while gathering your pitchforks). “THAT SOUNDS AWFUL!” (… no, no pitchforks?)
Here’s the thing — cutting away from a scene to build tension is a common technique. You see it in movies as well — the moment where the tension feels like it can’t be born anymore, and suddenly you’re in a tea shop and there’s the soft murmur of voices, but you know there’s a super hero fight about to arrive. It’s gives the reader a moment of seeing the future — something I am thoroughly convinced helps with the build up of tension.
If this had been played well, we would have seen it as building tension and it would have been great.
BUT, as a writer, reading it I felt a familiar creep up my spine as I read. You know what else authors are told to do — end chapters on cliffhangers. It’s a surefire way of making it impossible to put the book down. Build the tension, make them ask what’s going to happen next? and force them to turn the page.
I think the break down happens when you break for the cliffhanger, but don’t continue the scene you were in. Sometimes I stop writing in the middle of a scene for this reason, and, before I really think about it, I’m writing a scene that has nothing to do with it. Sometimes I break a scene because there’s a line that would be a great cliffhanger, and I jump onwards, without thinking about why the rest of the scene might matter.
You know why this happens a lot? Cause as a writer, I feel the tension building and I want it to stop. It’s a natural human reaction to want to take it easy (I kept on “forgetting” to write this post for example), and as a writer I needed a break from the tension.
After reading this book though, with this HUGE stumble, I have paused every time I’ve written a cliffhanger break and ask myself if I’m breaking because I’m trying to take the easy way out, or am I breaking because it will increase the need to finish the book?
Next week, Dany and I will be back with a mystery book! (Okay it might be The Thief but no promises).
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
Dany: I think there were some interesting ideas in Binti, but I’m not sure the execution always worked.
Rosey: Yeah… I found myself confused.
Dany: It’s just that I’m not sure if Binti, the main character, did all that much to drive along the plot. It felt a little like the author knew where she wanted the book to go but she was so focused on that that Binti didn’t really get to do all THAT much to get there
Rosey: ooo, I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s true.
Rosey: Some of it was totally the way that it was written…
Rosey: Maybe it would have felt more like Binti did more if we had been introduced to the Harmonizer stuff more… viscerally? Like, instead of Binti telling us, we get it through seeing her doing stuff with her dad…
Dany: I definitely feel like the parts about Binti being a Harmonizer could have been done better. I felt… very removed from what was going on at times.
Rosey: ah yes, and some things happened too easily for Binti?
Dany: Yeah, definitely.
Rosey: “I want to talk to the chief!” despite it being a huge deal and no human having been on their ship before, and she gets to do it. I think the best parts were the parts about her family and the feeling of fear and worry that came from doing what she felt she needed to do, versus what her family wanted of her and her clinging to the idea of herself going back despite changing.
Dany: Yes, I agree. I also liked the relationship between Owku and her.
Dany: Truth be told, novellas always seem to have that problem for me. They just tend to be too short. And I keep craving more depth, more explanations, and I’m usually always disappointed by the endings.
Rosey: haaaa, yeah. Problem with the medium. I wonder if the novel that comes after this feels more complete.
Dany: Yeah, I was wondering that too. I might read the next one just to see. Also it IS longer, so yeah, maybe it’ll feel better to me because of that
Rosey: I was trying to think of any other novellas that we’ve read, all I could think of was The Warrior, the Healer, and the Thief
Dany: I like to read them because they’re short, but I also tend to have trouble with them because they’re short.
Rosey: I think novellas work well as inbetween books for series. Most of the ones I like are .5s of series.
Dany: Ooooh yes, that could be it! And would also make sense, since you’d already know either the characters or at least the world the novella is set in that way
Rosey: yes!
Dany: So you don’t end up feeling like you’re missing out on any important info/depth
Rosey: yup, EITHER WRITE THE BOOK OR DON’T! This in between stage is annoying when it’s stand alone! I say, completely generalizing
Dany: I mean, I get it on one hand. On the other, I totally agree with your statement. ‘Cause the novellas I DID like I was always a little sad about because I kept wondering how much more awesome things could have been if the author had written 200 pages more. Double-edged sword, really
Dany: I guess, in general I liked some of the ideas presented in Binti but also thought they are worth exploring much deeper than they actually were. AND I wish the author would have made things harder for Binti as far as the Meduse were concerned (clearly leaving her home was superhard, and I think that part came across really well and believable, it’s just the rest that left something to be desired).
Rosey: I’m glad we read it and I think I’m interested enough to read the novel.
Dany: Me too!
Dany’s rating: 3/5 stars
Rosey’s rating: 3.5/5 stars
SINCE WE KEEP LYING TO YOU, faithful readers, about our next book, we’re not gonna announce what we’re reading next. Wanna know what it is? CHECK BACK IN TWO WEEKS!
Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo
You know what movies I really dig? Space horror, and deep sea horror. Nothing really beats a fine sci-fi horror movie out of 80s or 90s, or well, so I always assumed until I figured, hey, if I enjoy watching these things, why not read them? Surely there must be something cool out there! And there is.
After some (I admit) not so thorough research, I’ve narrowed down a few supposedly classic works in the genre. One of them is Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo, published in 2001, which I’ll be reviewing today.
Home to generations of humans, the starship Argonos has wandered aimlessly throughout the galaxy for hundreds of years, desperately searching for other signs of life. Now an unidentified transmission lures them toward a nearby planet-and into the dark heart of an alien mystery.
Sounds pretty cool, right? Well, it is! I certainly had a good time reading this book and delving into Russo’s world, even if not everything always made sense to me. Still, most of it worked, and did so wonderfully, weaving together themes of religion, philosophy and science, which, to be honest with you, is at least part of what makes especially space and deep sea horror such an interesting field for me. This is a genre that asks a lot of questions, about humanity, culture and – last but not least – the “meaning of life” and whenever I want to ponder life and (re) encounter the unfamiliar, I reach for books like this one.
It took a bit for Ship of Fools to pick up, but when it did, it really did. I didn’t want to put it down anymore or even go outside, I just wanted to see where the story would lead and how Russo would choose to answer the questions he poses throughout the book, particularly those concerning faith and belief. Especially the exploration of the alien ship was done masterfully, ominious and doubt inducing in a way that makes me wonder if the house in House of Leaves by Mark L. Danielewski was inspired by at least some of it. Who knows. Maybe. Either way, if you’ve liked the explorations in House of Leaves, you should definitely check out Ship of Fools as well (granted, it was — thankfully — much less anxiety inducing than Danielewski!).
I also liked the characters quite a bit, they were layered and interesting to follow, though what I found a bit unnecessary was that the only big female character got fridged three fourths into the book despite there being no need to do it at all. What’s most disappointing about Ship of Fools, though, is that while the premise is superinteresting, the pace good and the themes diverse and thought provoking, Russo still fails to provide any real answers by the end of his story. Indeed, the ending is so abrupt that it almost feels like the author lost interest and just wanted to get the book done. Sadly there is also no sequel in sight, which makes the unsatisfying ending even more dissatisfactory.
All in all, I would still recommend this book. It’s a classic, and it’s well written. If you like space horror, or even just horror, I think you might enjoy this. Just mentally prepare for an abrupt ending, and you’ll be fine.
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Join us next week when we discuss Red Sister by Mark Lawrence!
Ones and Zeroes by Dan Wells
Rosey: Ones and Zeroes?
Dany: [distracted by cat showing up] Huh?
Marisa Carneseca is on the hunt for a mysterious hacker named Grendel when she receives word that her amateur Overworld team has been invited to Forward Motion, one of the most exclusive tournaments of the year. For Marisa, this could mean anything—a chance to finally go pro and to help her family, stuck in an LA neighborhood on the wrong side of the growing divide between the rich and the poor. But Forward Motion turns out to be more than it seems—rife with corruption, infighting, and danger—and Marisa runs headlong into Alain Bensoussan, a beautiful, dangerous underground freedom fighter who reveals to her the darker side of the forces behind the tournament. It soon becomes clear that, in this game, winning might be the only way to get out alive.
Dany: I enjoyed Ones and Zeroes MUCH more than Bluescreen. And the character development was also definitely better.
Rosey: Me too! I kept thinking that it was amusing that we were supposed to read about thieves and con artists, and switched to a book about thieves and con artists.
Dany: And I found the team to be more relatable than the last time.
Rosey: Yes! I really felt like we got to dig into the characters and why they were the way they were. Plus, it helped push the story forwards.
Rosey: I had SO MANY FEELINGS about Fang in this book and like, the awkwardness of meeting online friends, plus the absolute joy of it (though Fang wasn’t neurotypical, was the thing that I picked up on? Or was that just me?).
Dany: Ah, yes. Fang was definitely relatable, and I liked the message of her being who she is when she is in her shell. I’m really not sure [about Fang being neurotypical].
Rosey: Not because of her being shy, it was more the touching thing and her finding it hard to keep eye contact.
Rosey: I was also really pleased the Overworld team was all there. In the last book we didn’t see much of them and in this one they were really there and felt like real people and I felt like we missed that in the last book.
Dany: Agreed. Tbh, I didn’t even like most of them in the last book 
Just because they didn’t feel all that relatable. But yes.
Rosey: They felt very expendable to me in the last one, like I wouldn’t care if they got hurt.
Dany: Yup.
Rosey: And this book was better at the pacing imo
Dany: Agreed. l also I feel like it might also have been better edited? I’m really not sure. The writing just felt so… chunky last time.
Rosey: I will say this book felt completely different than the last one, in a good way. It was also kind of surprising. This one felt kind of disconnected from the first one, but maybe it’s also that it wrapped up so neatly, but it felt kind of episodic to me and the next book will be another daring adventure with these characters.
Dany: I think it is supposed to be episodic since it’s not specified (or at least wasn’t last time I checked) how many books there will be
Rosey: Ah. For some reason I thought it was another trilogy /totally mixed up impression
Dany: Yeah, I had that impression too at first. But that was because of Partials being one, I guess, so my mind went straight to that possibility.
Rosey: Overall, I really enjoyed this, but I did have some quibbles about suspension of disbelief.
Dany: Yeah, I do have some trouble about suspension of disbelief as well. I think it’s very unlikely that what you do on your djinni isn’t, like, accessible to megacorps. It’s like assuming google isn’t accessing my data, or at least has the capability to access it at any time they want. Like, maybe I’m a pessimist but in a world as technologically advanced as that of the Mirador series…
Rosey: Yeaaaaah. I think for me I was like “… this girl runs over one of your assets “mr park” and he remembers her, so he should have her ID, and yet she’s allowed in a competition?” Surely they’ve looked her up.
Dany: Exactly.
Rosey: But yah know, MINOR DETAILS. It’s not like he used these weird bits to get away with an implausible ending.
Dany: Yes, and thank god for that. Honestly, though, I figured Dan would manage that. I don’t think I’ve ever felt cheated by any of his endings.
Dany: I had a weird moment of superstrong Partials nostalgia like 25% in though. Or maybe it was later?
Rosey: Why was that?
Dany: Oh just because of Alain and his introduction and Marisa and him bickering. It made me miss Samm and reminded me I need to reread Partials
Rosey: Hahaha, I am totally on board with Marissa and Alain. Mostly cause they are both hackers and I was very charmed by their first interaction.
Dany: Oh, so was I but the difference between their dynamic and Kira/Samm is what made me nostalgic, I guess, ’cause I had a moment of “oh wow I like this but this is so different”.
Rosey: I was contemplating the different relationships and how there’s so much there and how Dan managed to be quite good at tying so many different parts together. With Marisa’s sister, to her father, to Alain and her teammates. There’s a lot going on. It’s nice, and feels like something you can really grab on to as a world and I think that’s how he manages to be a favorite. Cause he’s creating grounded characters, even while the plots are crazy.
Dany: Yeaaaah, he really managed to tie many different parts together this time. I think it’s what I was missing the first time around, and so everything was a little disconnected.
But Ones and Zeroes definitely took it up a notch and managed to get me excited for the series again. Plus it was nice to read a book again that wasn’t me going “ugh how am I only at x % still????” But y’know 😉
Rosey: Hahaha. Yeah, I was so relieved to be reading something I liked. I was having a time where I was like “HAVE I READ ALL THE BOOKS I LIKE?” “HAVE I REACHED THE END!?” but no. I hadn’t.
Dany’s rating: 4.5/5 stars
Rosey’s rating: 4.5/5 stars
Join us in two weeks when we’ll be discussing:
Fox and O’Hare by Jannet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg
Dany’s sick, so I’m taking over the blog today, mwahahahahaha… oh no, what have I even read this week?
I guess the answer to that is The Animorphs series and the Fox and O’Hare series. Also Feet of Clay by Terry Prachett.
Despite having a lot of feeling about the Animorphs (far too many for a middle grade set of books that I rip through in an hour), I don’t actually have a lot to say about them. Feet of Clay, on of Prachett’s City Watch books is similarly out of the running. Which, I suppose, leaves me with Fox and O’Hare.
Oh boy. You might want to buckle up.
I tried Jannet Evanovich’s first series — Stephanie Plum two years ago while driving across the country. It was light fare, with a heroine that I distinctly disliked. I thought about starting the second book over and over again, but could never quite get myself to do it.
Fast forward to two weeks ago, when in a fit of trying to look up heist books (for research), I couldn’t get away from the Fox and O’Hare series. I stared at it, I tried to find a way out of reading it.
I read it.
If you’ve watched White Collar, you know the plot. FBI agent catches a master con artist, flips them, and takes down bad guys. Neal–I mean Nick, is always three steps ahead, and interested in cons for the challenge, not for the money. White Collar is better. Leverage outstrips them all.
Let me first explain why I didn’t like the first one. The major problem with this book is that the characters are about as three dimensional as pancakes. Nick especially, but even Kate, who ends up being the audience’s ears and eyes most of the time, comes across as little more than a badge and gun with boobs. She is your classic Uptight Woman Who Will Be Magically Set Free By A Man’s Penis (can you guess which penis?). She’s married to her job, and ‘by-the-book’ in that way by the book agents always say they are, but aren’t because BUREAUCRACY IS BAD! Fine. Kate’s kind of a cookie cutter agent.
But Ne– Nick, this really is getting bad, isn’t much better. He’s a con man with a strict moral code to never get bystanders hurt, and only to steal from those who deserve it. Which apparently in this universe is just “rich people”?
I mean, fine, we get shown that they are bad people plenty of times, but there’s definitely an angle that flattens out the emotions of the bad guys, and makes Kate and Nick the Official Good Guys with very little thinking on the part of the audience. No moral ambiguity here!
The first book was all of these tropes dropped together and left to warm under a hot sun. It was… fine. I felt very little of the excitement of the plot, in part because the plot kept starting and stopping. The cons all went according to plan, until they didn’t, and the end was an exciting blow out.
Plus an uninspired, far too obvious kiss, that made me question if flirty Nick and stoic Kate ever had any romantic tension between them.
“You continued to read?” You ask, now holding a glass of champagne Nea–Nick has put in your hand.
Yes, dear reader, I did indeed keep reading. I can tell you why too. In case you hadn’t already figured out, I live in LA, where traffic rules supreme, and it was while i was in traffic that I listened to this book (at 1.75x the normal speed). I got to the end, and discovered that I liked the narrator’s voice too much to stop listening to it. It was calming while trying not to murder other LA residents in our mad rush to get into the Valley.
So I started the next one.
The Chase faired a little better than the last one. Evanovich and Goldberg seemed to have figured out their tropes enough to play with them a little. The characters were still a little flat, still played in their corners a little too tightly, but you could feel the tension between Nick and Kate, and they had started to think like one another in a way that made them interesting.
By the time I got to book three, they had fleshed out enough that I felt gripped by the story. I didn’t want to stop reading.
Book four was certainly the peak of my liking this series. It was fast paced and well plotted. There were plenty of twists and turns and there was a lot of delightful banter that had me laughing out loud. I finally understood why everyone else liked Evanovich so much. But it took me four books to get there.
Still, it wasn’t a deep read. There were a lot of descriptions of cities, buildings and so on. The bad guys were always pure evil. The Good Guys were always EXTRA good. The plots always went off with only minor hitches. I never worried that our heroes wouldn’t get out of their predicaments (because really that’s what they were).
Indeed, I think that’s what sunk the fifth book. Suddenly the stakes were raised to a global threat, and I knew it couldn’t go wrong, so there was a decrease in the urgency of the book. I didn’t need to finish it to find out [SPOILER] LA would be safe from small pox.
Was the series enjoyable? Certainly there was something there or I wouldn’t have read all five books in a little more than one week. Would I suggest them to anyone?
Eh…
Dany and I will be discussing our joint book next week How To Lead a Life of Crime.
All good wishes for health can be sent directly to Dany via the Robots Read Good Wish Foundation*.
* Not a real foundation.
Dark Orbit by Carolyn Ives Gilman
Rosey: I was very startled when the book ended
Dany: Was it too abrupt for you?
Rosey: I can’t tell, I just know I turned the page expecting there to be more, and… it was done. It was a very odd experience.
Dany: Haaaah. Yeah, it was a little odd. I kinda liked it though, ending on a note of not knowing I mean, although I can’t tell if it was a copout or not
Rosey: Usually I would say it totally is and glare at the book, but apparently she’s written several other books in the universe, so who knows?
I feel this Arab-coded world is kinda racist. – Rosey on Goodreads
Dany: In general I really LIKED the idea of the book but the execution didn’t always feel… right.
Rosey: agreed, the execution got weird at times.
Dany: I agree on the Arab-coded world you mentioned. It does seem racist.
Rosey: the Arab-coded world really was bad.
Dany: Ugh, it was.
Rosey: Just… no.
Dany: Yeaaaah. It was full of prejudice and cliches. Also Thora being the one to lead those women to freedom felt wrong. Like they needed an outsider to be “saved”. So yeah, that whole part was just a big no and I was glad when it was over.
Dany: There were also some things in the book that also felt ableist.
Rosey: oh very much so. I thought she was going to be going somewhere with the stuff about scrubbing Thora’s brain of her psychotic break, but… it didn’t pan out in the direction I thought it would and we’re kind of left with the impression that any mental differences are crushed.
Dany: BIG wince there.
… >___> – Dany on Goodreads
Dany: I did kinda find Torobe the village interesting and their whole way of experiencing the world and the differences (even though ugh gender roles why).
Rosey: yeah it was interesting thinking about a community that lives completely in the dark, and the way everything became tactile and touch based.
Dany: yes
Rosey: and some of the stuff with Thora… losing her sense of herself was very visceral for me.
Dany: What do you mean, visceral?
Rosey: Something about it brought to mind being in the dark, and like… you lose the sense of where your body ends?
Dany: oh yes, that was really well done in my opinion!
Rosey: yes!
Dany: also the spatial distortions etc were interesting in the way they were described.
Rosey: yes! I thought there was a lot there.
Dany: like the first time they’re in the “forest” and Thora “falls”. I got a bit lightheaded sometimes; it was cool.
Dany: I think the descriptions of the setting and the feel of it were probs the best part of the book, so I’m glad we read it, for that.
Rosey: Unfortunately, for me, some of the parts that made me sit up and want more were the parts that were kind of glossed over. Like, how traveling between worlds takes years, and a person loosing the moorings of their place in time.
Dany: I’m sad that got glossed over too! Wasters… such an interesting idea
also how their concept of time differs to the concept of those staying in one place/one time
Rosey: Yes! It reminded me of Six Wakes. It certainly alerted me to the fact that the theme is something that I’m interested in reading about and thinking about.
Dany: Also just the theme of “people turn into who we think they are” was great, but it made it all the more ironic, that there was racism and ableism in this book.
Dany: Also sci fi books about space are just so cool. I am really enoying them.
Dany’s rating: 3.5/5 stars
Rosey’s rating: 3.5/5 stars
Sign us up for class with our next book:
Self-Inflicted Wounds
Chris Fox said in 5000 Words Per Hour that mindset is a huge thing, and when you decide and know where you’re going to go, your brain starts picking up on signs that will lead you to success. It’s a ridiculously upbeat statement, that I fully endorse, cause it’s true. Our brains are weird things that take in everything, but only show us a small range of things.
Why start by talking about this? Am I diving into Chris Fox’s other book I read in the last week? Nah. I’m bringing it up cause my brain’s selective attention has all been on risk taking, taking chances, and failure.
If you don’t know Aisha Tyler, you should check her out. I knew her first from Friends and then when she took over Whose Line is it Anyway? but then I checked out her stand up and found her to be quite funny. She’s not my favorite comic, but I definitely like her.
Her book, as the title might indicate, is all about the times she’s failed. Told in funny anecdotes, Tyler manages to make you relate with her (well, maybe just the people who were far into sci-fi and fantasy as a kid), and also see how her failures have shaped her.
My love of self-help books makes it clear that the only way to learn is through failure, and Tyler certainly agrees with this (I suppose that means it’s probably true, DAMNIT!). But Tyler’s book seems to really drive home the fact that you can’t fail unless you do something.
Stand ups seem to really hold true to this idea. They live and die on instantaneous feedback. Failure for them is the crickets when a joke doesn’t land. But if you do nothing at all, then you’re going to get silence anyways. Might as well share an idea and get the blank reply than stand for nothing.
So what does that have to do with what Chris Fox was talking about? Well, I am a ball of anxieties, pretty much all the time, but lately I have noticed more and more of the message that doing something is better than doing nothing. You can fail both ways, but it’s better to fail at something.
Terrifying as that idea might be to me (you mean having dreams about being forced on to stage with no lines memorized isn’t normal?), it also means a lot. I struggle, often, with wanting to do things. It’s much easier to stay at home and play in my corner. But that’s not the kind of failure I want to learn from (cause I’ve already learned about doing nothing).
This book reinforced the message.
Don’t worry universe, I’m about to go do some things.
Check back in next week with us for a discussion on Dark Orbit by Carolyn Ives Gilman.
robots read 