Reviews and Comments

I didn't get on with this book. I can't really review or rate it, because I think the issue is that it rests on a set of knowledge about Brazilian history that I just don't have. I've read other poems by Brimhall and found them quite affecting, but I just felt like I was constantly missing what this book was talking about.

Starts out packed with interesting ideas, gradually devolves into the author's Enlightment fantasy (super Eurocentric with a tokenistic Japanese presence) and by the end veers completely off the rails into a Renaissance-francophile sexual fantasy. I'm not sure why I read to the end.

An astonishing book. Every bit as brutal as I'd expect from an indigenous-focussed post-apocalyptic story, and yet there's a surprising core of hopefulness in it. And all the way through it's thoroughly human, often quite tender, in ways that post-apocalyptic stories sometimes forget to be.

There's a lot in this book. A love letter mainly to NYC but also to cities in general. And at the same time a really powerful allegory about whiteness and the terrible work it does - one which has only felt more timely in the few weeks since I read it. But I also found it kind of a frustrating read, because Jemisin repeatedly interrupts a good, clear story to somewhat condescendingly say "look reader, this bit's about whiteness", when the plot and characters were doing the work and really didn't need that help.[return][return]I do want to read the next in the series, but I hope that in book 2 she's more content to let the storytelling work.

Absolutely delightful novella that manages to touch on big themes about what it means to be accepted as a person, and to deal with people when you're not sure, while staying fun, light read.

A beautiful, deeply sad book that tells the story of South Africa before Apartheid had a name, but when most of that system was functionally in place, through a few peoples' connected stories.[return][return]The writing is a powerful example of how to love a place while despising crucial things about it.[return][return]The book does have some weaknesses which I think reflect the author's position of privilege relative to half of the characters. White saviourism creeps in a little in book 3; there aren't really any fully realised female characters; and I think he lets off Anglo South Africa too easily by caricaturing Afrikaners as the sole drivers of Apartheid. It's a mark of Paton's skill as a writer that all of these elements are much less of a drag than in other books like this I've read (notably Snow Falling on Cedars, which is all-but-ruined by the equivalent flaws). It may be the best account a white South African could have written of that moment in time, and now I really want to read a black South African's counterpart.

Wow. This book has a very different mood from the first in the trilogy, but just like it it sucked me in from a slow and uncertain start to completely taking over head for a few days after I finished it. I love the simultaneous vividness and vagueness of the thing that looms over this trilogy's world, and the endless ambiguity of who "should" prevail through the whole story. Looking forward to the final book.

What a gorgeous book. The rich, rich writing is a feast for the eyes, and while at first it felt like that would be the sole pleasure of the book (which would have been enough to keep me reading!), after a few chapters it turns into a gripping story that has a lot to say the clash of literate vs oral cultures, the experience of being a stranger in a strange land, and the pitfalls of putting a culture on a pedestal.

I took a long time over this book, and I'm still not sure what to make of it. At times it felt like each chapter deepened and expanded its point in a worthwhile way, but at times it felt like each chapter was saying the same thing. There's definitely something profound and insightful in its analysis of a type of classical Chinese art, but I'm deeply wary of the overarching claims the [non-Chinese] author makes about the totality of Chinese culture and worldview based on that.

I very much appreciate this book for two reasons: that it starts with the fundamental moral case that no opponent of open borders can answer, and that it answers many of the common objections with much more patience than I can muster.[return][return]But it does also have its flaws. I found the discussion of poor countries frustratingly defeatist, some of the arguments with academics who disagree get a little personal / fixated, and as an immigrant myself some of the discussion of the economics of immigration felt a little... dehumanising.[return][return]Still, I am very glad this book exists, and do expect to recommend it to people who I would hope to convince.

I feel like I'm supposed to love this book, but it just didn't do much for me. At its best the writing is quite lyrical and there are some wonderfully quotable passages, but taken as a whole it felt like Gibran had tried to find universals among world religions and that road had just led him to rather obvious truisms.

This is the book to read when beginning to tire of Iain Banks's non-scifi formula. It starts out seeming, well, pretty formulaic, but as the plot develops it becomes clear that the author realised he was in danger of falling into that sort of rut, and decided to play with the expectations that he'd set up. The result is one of his lighter and more laugh-out-loud funny novels, even though at the same time it has some pretty pointed things to say about a thoroughly regrettable period of recent history, and in hindsight about the things that white men get away with. My one criticism is that at times the protagonist's political rants--which were clearly Banks speaking through a character--get self-indulgently long. Even agreeing with him I found myself wanting him to shut up and move the story on at times.

This book also captures the zeitgeist of 2001/02 London really beautifully - a time I remember particularly vividly because it was the last couple of years of me living in London's orbit.

I would recommend not reading this one until you've read a few of his others. It stands alone, but some of the surprises would have had less impact if I'd read it with a less of an expectation of what Iain Banks did.

A fun romp through an alternate history in which the swampier parts of the US were given over to hippo rearing (which was apparently a serious proposal around the end of the 19th Century). By the end the characters felt a little flat and the plot a bit too absurd.

I got this on the strength of Stålenhag's paintings, which I'd seen online and made up a completely different backstory for (standard dystopian scifi). What he actually does is much more interesting: it's very much a young boy's fantasy but told well enough to be an engaging read as an adult. And of course the paintings are gorgeous: a very familiar 80s European suburbia made strange and unsettling.