angelcage | Books Read in May:

I'd say I have no idea how I managed to get any reading done whilst studying for finals and finishing up major projects, but I know perfectly well how I managed. I'd go through my whole list of sample questions, watch a youtube video or read a chapter to distract myself so when I checked my answers I wasn't likely to confuse what the correct and incorrect answers were, write out the correct answers to all the ones I had gotten wrong, and then rewrite all the questions. Fuck around and watch or read something else, then answer them all again without any reference, see what I remembered. Rinse and repeat until I memorised all possible relevant factoids.

It's a decent method for memorisation, actually, but it takes a while and does mean a lot of my study time is fucking around doing other things.

So! Books!

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

Leigh Bardugo is someone I read intermittently. I read her first before Six of Crows was a thing yet, I checked Shadow and Bone out of the Lake City branch of the Seattle Public Library when I worked up there, and needed something to read on the bus rides to and from work. This meant basically checking out a lot of YA because it wasn't something I was likely to be overcome with emotion over on the bus and ugly cry about and still enjoy without it being something I absolutely couldn't put down because it was my stop. It also meant I got frustrated with a lot of really really bad YA.

I did not get frustrated with Shadow and Bone, I liked the setting in Ravka, and while the leads were doing the usual. YA thing. It was a YA novel, I knew what I was getting into. I found the characters pretty shallow and wasn't particularly... invested or impressed with any of them? I also read Holly Black and Cassie Clare who had similar dynamics at play but they had more fun versions of the same trope and dynamic I was reading here.

Which is to say, even though I've read much better Leigh Bardugo books by now I never really expect to invest in them, and then I read them and I'm like oh yeah she really has gotten better since then. Because it's been like ages and she's written a lot more books since then. But there is still enough of that first set of books in them that I always am like ah, yeah, a Leigh Bardugo book even though that is absolutely not fair to her because there are plenty of YA fiction writers who have started to write adult fiction who still write the same damn character dynamic. I don't even mind that character dynamic. I just don't think Leigh Bardugo is the most compelling writer of it, even when both characters are separately compelling.

I think Luzia Cotado is compelling. Great character, excellent set-up. I think Guillén Santángel is... mid. He's fine but he's just overshadowed by everyone else here, and he is the primary romance. Alas and alack.

None of this actually makes The Familiar a less excellent book, though. It's just me going ah why don't I like Leigh Bardugo more. Puzzling. Mystifying. Writes excellent books and I am just like yeah, she's okay! I like her stuff well enough!

Anyway, all the side-characters were excellent, the stakes were high and it delivered on the punches so the tension was felt all throughout it and it delivered a really well-earned ending. I feel a lot of stories, regardless of medium, tend to not stick the landing so I am always happy to see one where I'm like YEAH YEAH YEAH. Also extremely well-situated, historically. There's a list of books Bardugo read in research at the back, and it really does show. This does make it a bit funny I saw a review that was panning it for not focusing on the world-building, but it's like... friend. It's the real world. If you want to know more about the position of Spain within Europe during the time of the inquisition, a handy list has been compiled! Anyway, I enjoyed the historical fantasy aspect. I'm avoiding spoilers in my overview, but Valentina and Hualit were favourite characters and that's all I'll say about them.

The Ragpicker King by Cassandra Clare

SPEAKING OF YA TURNED ADULT FANTASY NOVELISTS... yup! Here's another! Cassandra Clare's books have always been popcorn reads for me, really easy to just plow through despite their length so it's a lot of fun nonsense. She's great with ensemble casts, fun repartee, plot set-up and pay off. This is more of the same. I will say this is almost... hm. Like there were twists that I suspected but didn't 100% see coming but could trace back once it happened (Antonetta), ones I did figure out early(Falconet), and some that were set-up even in the previous book but only revealed now(The Ragpicker King). It fits very neatly together. The character motivations are all at odds, their loyalties all over the map, and figuring all of it out makes for good politicking and plotting.

But I also felt no real tension in it? Like we knew the other shoe was going to drop with Kel getting found out by Connor at some point. And then it happened. But both characters' trust in each other is so well established that there was really really no tension there of WILL THIS BE A REAL BETRAYAL? No, obviously not, Connor is not going to actually fuck Kel over. It's kind of a shame there's no... medium bastards in this book? Clare has done more gut punches in previous books and series. In this one everyone is pretty like. Baseline bit of a bastard but I really do mean a bit of one. I've seen reviews compare this to game of thrones and it's like... maybe in terms of politics exist and it's a european fantasy setting. But otherwise everyone feels like a decent person with basic humanising flaws OR they're unforgivably evil in this book. The antagonists? Unforgivably evil. The protagonists? Basically all likable. I felt the first book had more like interesting medium-flaw level characters, and some of the ones we had in the first book have, unfortunately for me, turned their acts around And since everyone in this one is either very evil or basically good, to maneuver some of the basically good characters into doing things that put others in a bad position, the actions taken felt contrived. (Conflict between Kel and Connor is symptomatic of this but it was not exclusive to just that) I don't really know what to say there. Maybe it's middle book syndrome? But it felt like it was pulling its punches. Still, since I read Clare as popcorn fiction, I don't expect to be moved by it I'm just here for a fun ride.

And as that, it fulfills its purpose. Lin's storyline is great though it was a bit like LIN OBVIOUSLY YOU ARE ACTUALLY THE GODDESS PLEASE THINK ABOUT YOUR WEIRD DREAMS YOU HAD ALL LAST BOOK AND THIS ONE. I guess this is a spoiler but it has been obvious for two books now. The reveal is like Lin finally realises it too rather than a shocker. Antonetta was less of a character in this book but I feel that's because she was there just enough to set her up for the reveal and now she has more tension but also an equal footing for her relationship with Kel. The first book was stronger overall, I think, with an ending that put everyone in a tough position and makes you feel invested in what's to come. The second book I think resolved too much of that initial tension in its set-up which makes the rest of it feel weaker, and then a lot of it is maneuvering around to get to some things that I don't think we as audience are really that worried about how it's going to go.

Elsewhere by Alexis Schaitkin

Wherein motherhood manifests as a disease in a small town, where women who have children are fated to fade away out of being. The metaphor is clear and simple but I think where this novel shines is in the growing up within the system and cherishing the things you have been taught to cherish— and when presented with things from the outside, the knee-jerk rejection the narrator has. And then, years later, after a long separation across time and space she returns and is able to see the place she grew up anew only to find it unfamiliar because she can now see the flaws that she was blinded to as a young woman.

Very well executed.

And then the DNFs... Just one for May, and it was Anne Bishop's Daughter of the Blood. I wanted some fun garbage, but the writing on that one was just so awful that My Immortal looks like top-quality prose next to it. I was checking reviews online and was absolutely astounded that all the bad reviews were people like oh no it's problematic and gross. I don't care if a 1000 year old sex fantasy meets a small child and is like OH SHIT YOU WILL GROW UP TO BE QUEEN and then when she is older he returns to her and is like COME IT IS TIME FOR US TO TAKE OVER THE KINGDOM. like that's really standard harmless wish-fulfillment fantasy.

But the problem is, for me, mister wish fulfillment fantasy is like, in the setting women have more power than men but what we see on page is really standard misogyny upheld by the characters within the setting in terms of their opinion on women and the way characters behave, so it already failed to actually commit to its world building despite info-dumping its way through the first few chapters. Very tell, no show at all. I can sometimes overlook that, but the characters had the depth of a puddle each so there was nothing to invest in. And all of it was written in, again, prose beneath the level of My Immortal. So I read like 50 pages and was like thaaat's enough for me and dropped it.