Friday 29 September 2017

Invictus

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Book Title: Invictus
Author: Ryan Graudin
Date Started: September 26th 2017
Date Completed: September 29th 2017
Genres: Sci-Fi, Historical, Romance
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Five Star
Final Rating: Four stars
Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

Invictus was a lot of fun. You can tell Ryan loved writing it between her darker books because the spirit of it just lifts from the page. I've yet to read one of her books that I haven't really enjoyed. Her work varies in maturity and genre but every time it's a joy to read.

If you're a history nerd, you'll enjoy this book. Not necessarily for its accuracy (though it could've been much worse - there weren't any specific examples where I was screaming 'that's not what it was like'), but for the various little references scattered through. I'm sure there were some I didn't get as modern history is so much my thing, but the ancient history and renaissance eras were enjoyable just for the little jokes thrown in. (I'd also like to mention how nice it is to have a time travelling story set in the future that doesn't have to go to our present for a cheap 'oh look it's us' gimmick.)

Thank you universe for giving me a stand-alone YA book that wraps up its story. It's such a breath of fresh air to have a book that doesn't have to extend into a series to finish its plot. It's ridiculous how hard it is to find them these days that its a selling point on its own for me. And Invictus proves the point that you don't have to make your story into a franchise for it to be compelling and enjoyable. Yes, the story started to crumble a little bit in believability towards the end, but it's a time travelling book, how can it not? This novel has a well-paced, self-contained story that you can get properly invested in because you know what you're signing up for. I really hope YA publishers start noticing that stand-alone books are just as valuable as series and start to bring them back.

Like a lot of my favourite authors, what Ryan specialises in is people. Well, people and her worlds; she often has futuristic twists on various eras in our world, but in a way that they end up feeling new and unique. With Invictus, that side of the coin is already solved with the time travelling aspect, but the characters are their own element. What pushes this story at times when it might otherwise drag is the dynamics between the crew members and their ability to be believable but still young and, at times, irresponsible and wild. They're not exactly rebels (you're not fooling anyone, Far) but they're young people free to jump around history. Their likeability pushes what is a story that becomes a bit silly at times, but you can buy into it because it suits the characters and fits into its own canon. The worst thing a book can do is misunderstand what it is and take itself too seriously or not seriously enough. Invictus strikes a good balance between the two.

I'm generally not the biggest fan of sci-fi or time travel in books, but Invictus was still great fun for me. The whole crew-relationships and crime-heist thievery with a futuristic twist is always a winner. People are comparing it to Firefly, and while I politely say that it can't touch Firefly's genius, add a little dash of Star Trek, Roman Mysteries and Back to the Future and you get pretty close.

Tuesday 26 September 2017

The Power

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Book Title: The Power
Author: Naomi Alderman
Date Started: September 16th 2017
Date Completed: September 26th 2017
Genres: Sci-Fi, Thriller
Quality Rating: Four Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Star
Final Rating: Three stars
Review:

The Power is a science-fiction(ish) thriller through and through, that's stepped out of its bounds into some gender politics, but without conviction. It's a victim of its own success in the way that it's not the kind of book that it's been made out to be - which is a shame because what it actually is in concept isn't a bad novel.

The big hype around this book is its look at women and their relationship to power when suddenly they all develop the ability to strike electricity from their bodies. It definitely makes you think about misogyny when the roles are reversed; men having to have registered female guardians; men being harassed on the street because the women feel powerful; women thinking that men want to be shocked during sex because it's 'excitingly dangerous' etc. But I wouldn't call it feminism. Yes, the conclusions we might eventually draw in some way support the desire to get rid of stiff gender roles and expectations, but the events that happen are women becoming superior to men - which is not feminism. What worries me about this book is that it's being heralded as a work of feminist literature but it's showing the wrong way to deal with gender violence, and some people aren't going to read the satire underneath.

Alderman is clearly a thriller writer - and a good one in that respect. But I don't think thriller was the right genre to explore this story in. Yes, the 'power' strongly influences and drives the events in the book, but half of the time we're looking at the drug trade and journalism in war zones, just with the gender swapped around. It doesn't make much of a difference in the end. I almost wish a different writer had taken this idea and ran with it, because I think a more focused exploration on what's actually happening to the politics and culture would've been more interesting. In all fairness, I don't think this was ever intended to be a literary comment on misogyny. But, again, it's a victim of its own success in that way, and now isn't able to stand up to what people expect of it.

There were so many different directions this story could've gone in. There was so much you could've done with it, that I'm a little puzzled with the choices that Alderman went with. Again, the thriller angle didn't fit it for me, but I think she knew there was a lot to be done with the idea. But instead of choosing the best bits and focusing on them, or even trying to give a brief view over lots of diverse areas, we end up with a book that simultaneously tries to do too much with too many characters, and ends up doing very little at all. We've got six(ish) protagonists that are in different places in the world but actually have somewhat similar backgrounds and desires. I would've been interested to see what women in absolute poverty went after they got the power - and not just in one chapter where the journalist writes an article about them. Because of this, when we reached the end, I was underwhelmed because I hadn't really connected with any of the characters (either through their lack of diversity from each other or because I never got to spend enough time with each of them). Not that there was any sort of clear triumph or tragedy by the end anyway. I'm all for quiet endings, but I'd all but settled on the fact that this was a thriller novel by then.

I'm left with the confusion that I can't tell if the female rebellion of dominance was at the centre of this book, or a means to an end. In basic terms, all I can see the reversal of roles being used for is to create a tense environment. It's not really saying anything (constructive, anyway) about gender roles. And in that way it's successful: the mix-up of hierarchy puts the reader on uneven footing, where we're not completely sure how things are going to work out because it's not what we first expect. But at the same time, in our culture when you write something that so graphically addresses gender violence and aggression, you have to accept that it means something. I feel like The Power doesn't own up to the responsibility of what it's saying. Does it even know what's it's saying? Is it actually saying anything?!

I was interested in reading The Power mainly because it won the Baileys prize, as I'm sure a lot of people were. It probably won it as one of the more accessible books from the selection, but that's because it's not literary fiction. Not that it should have to be, of course, but I think that while this novel might be a gateway book into more complex literary stories, it falls short in too many places to stand up to what people are calling it.

Saturday 16 September 2017

The History of Bees

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Book Title: The History of Bees
Author: Maja Lunde
Date Started: September 6th 2017
Date Completed: September 16th 2017
Genres: Historical, Mystery
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Two Star
Final Rating: Two stars
Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

I got 27% through this book and gave up not because it was terrible, but because I was genuinely uninterested and was avoiding reading as a result. Nothing happened nor started to happen in what I read, so I was terribly motivated to carry on.

The big thing that turned me off of The History of Bees is how little worldbuilding we're given. I think it was so important to how well this book was going to be pulled off since we have only one story actually told in our historical canon, and the other two in progressively worse states of a dystopian-ish/sci-fi-ish future (the fact that I couldn't really work out which of those genres it was supposed to be similar to proves my point). It made it really hard to sympathise or even really follow the characters, as many of their dilemmas were circumstantial; providing for the family, dealing with a child who doesn't want to follow your footsteps, raising a child who you know essentially doesn't have a future. I wasn't given enough of an idea of how significant these things were in the context to feel anything for them.

You could rename this book 'Bad Parenting in Three Different Centuries'. From what I read, that was the crux of the story. I would like to think that it develops somewhat further than just that, but I wasn't prepared to carry on and find out. Everyone was dislikeable for me, and as such when mashed together with the lack of contextual information it became three family dramas in a world where I couldn't understand the motivations of anyone. It just felt like three sets of parents making questionable decisions and feeling sorry for themselves.
Another issue I found for the early parts of the book was the lack of cohesion between the stories. I'm all for split stories or multiple perspectives, but if you're going to do that there needs to be a link in situation, story or at least tone. You can't just use it as a way to cut somewhere else when things get boring or you want to extend tension. You start to feel cheated as a reader and have even less of a chance to connect with the characters.

This book gets comparisons to Station Eleven, understandably. Multiple stories across decades where humanity goes into a somewhat apocalyptic scenario, all linked (apparently?) and named after a book that happens to be in the story itself. Personally, I don't think The History of Bees has the spirit and imagination of Station Eleven, but perhaps if you're more into science than performance arts you might prefer it.

Wednesday 6 September 2017

Alias Grace

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Book Title: Alias Grace
Author: Margaret Atwood
Date Started: August 27th 2017
Date Completed: September 6th 2017
Genres: Historical, Mystery
Quality Rating: Four Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Star
Final Rating: Four stars
Review:


Alias Grace is my third Atwood novel, and while I enjoyed it and appreciated it at least to some level, I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. It is the story of a woman incarcerated and scrutinised and with few remorses left herself, but one that is unbiased in its directness, but of course fuelled by the injustices its protagonist has faced.

It's true when they say that Atwood is almost like a different writer with every book, but her humour is still the same and the voice consistent. I was worried people meant that her books are hit and miss down to your preferences, but just because they cover different time periods, different topics and different tenses doesn't mean that they don't all have her signature style.
What made Alias Grace interesting was how it kept you on your toes. We never really know if our narrator is reliable or not, nor do we know if we can trust the other characters around her. You aren't sure if you're being lied to and your reaction is just sympathy and outrage, or if you should be more suspicious and risk being cruel. It's the game the characters are playing and it feels like you're caught in the middle of it.

As with most books in this vein, the pacing is slow but you do feel the progress as you go. It's a thoughtful book over excitement. The crime mystery genre feels somewhat misleading, as it's much more of a literary fiction novel. Things play out and the reader is right in the middle of it, but also watches them with some distance. I enjoyed the way it looked at misogyny and the 1800s culture in early America. It's not a period I'm that familiar with, but the text is thorough enough to make you feel at home even if you don't know the setting.
Of course, because we begin with the awareness that Grace was involved in the murders of Mr Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery, there's a momentum that pushes the whole story through. We know that the narrative is building up to something, and although I wouldn't say that expectation of a reveal is dealt with in the most satisfying way, there's a definite feeling of closure even when things turn sour for many of those involved.

Though it wasn't my favourite novel by Atwood that I've read, Alias Grace was again a brilliant book from her works. Quite unlike anything I've read so far, it plays with your expectations and suspicions and puts a bare woman in front of you and piles you with accusations and sympathies, and asks who you believe.