The Children of Jocasta

 Book Title: The Children of Jocasta

Author: Natalie Haynes

Date Started: December 16th 2021

Date Completed: January 31st 2022

Genres: Historical, Mythology

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

I love Natalie Haynes, and Antione is my favourite play full stop (let alone Greek Tragedy), so a retelling of the Oedipus cycle was always going to score well for me. Ironically, Antigone isn't painted especially well but how nice to see her sister Ismene, who is so belittled and overlooked in the originals, take centre stage along with their mother. The Children of Jocasta was definitely slow to start off, but then it became impossible to put down.

This book definitely goes down the 'logical explanation' route of retellings, and both loses and gains assets by doing so. There's less of the wonder and righteousness for me, but there was more humanity and of course acknowledgement of the women's stories - however less divine or 'exciting' they may be. What I really loved was how Haynes retold the story, allowing for a bittersweet ending and a more fleshed out narrative than the few fragments of primary research literature have allowed us.

Something that I often find with classical retellings is that writers really like to exaggerate the depressing tragedy and often overlook the moments of magic and love that any human being experiences even in the worst of circumstances. I don't think many people would argue that the Oedipus cycle isn't one of the most depressing out there. But there's a balance that makes these stories timeless, and that's the thing a lot of modern authors don't seem to get. Natalie Haynes does, and it sets her above the rest.

Her afterwords are always so good. Haynes has such an engaging and witty tone, such an understanding of the role Classics has in our modern society - its failings as well as its strengths. I do ultimately prefer her non-fiction to her fiction just because of this marvellous tone she achieves (I wish I could write like that), but The Children of Jocasta is still far and away one of the best classical retellings out there at the moment. Natalie Haynes is the modern face of Classicism that I was so sorely missing when I studied the subject in sixth form, and is undeniably one of the reasons I have continued to learn more as an adult.

I imagine you would probably get more out of the book if you're familiar with the original stories - that's not a strict rule as Haynes weaves together a couple of different versions of the story and retells it in her own way. But I have seen a chunk of other people saying they would've preferred to know the original myth, and I can see why. A lot of the enjoyment for me came from the dramatic irony and understanding of the characters before their fates befell them - and the gentle, nuanced way Haynes adapted little details probably felt so empowering because I understood as a reader how they differ and improve on the classical tale.

The Secret Commonwealth

 Book Title: The Secret Commonwealth

Author: Philip Pullman

Series: The Book of Dust #2

Date Started: December 28th 2021

Date Completed: January 16th 2022

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

How well this series has aged. The Book of Dust, particularly in The Secret Commonwealth, is complex but so accessible. I'm always amazed by how Pullman can communicate such complicated systems, politics and emotions in a genuine and understandable way regardless of who's reading.

This book is a masterclass not in writing sequels but in revisiting an existing character's journey in a new way. Many of the themes from His Dark Materials are present, but the narrative is different; Lyra's goal has changed, her world has moved on, but most importantly we remember everything and everyone that has come before but they aren't shoehorned into this one for the sake of gratuitous references. And so everything is allowed to feel new. I often talk about books that serendipitously find you at exactly the right time. The Secret Commonwealth is absolutely one of those, as well as being another series that has grown up with me as I have grown and just happens to deal with my crises when I am faced with them.

Narrative-wise, of course there's the big world-changing plot here but, as always with Pullman's writing, there's an additional emotional story going on about how we seem to lose conviction as we grow older (that one hit home hard) despite the fact we seem to have more agency and knowledge at our fingertips. As we're able to reach for things further away, the further they seem to drift. There's also the wider socio-political refugee crisis that Pullman doesn't shy away from, and the growing indoctrination of bad religious practice, how politics become less about helping communities of people and more about propelling one or two to power. And, on the internal level, there's the exploration of how our troubles and concerns feel small and insignificant so we hide them away, and how so many others face their mirror, and the ripples caused by ignoring them as problems. All of this is underneath the story - and the story is thrilling enough without having to read into it. But I'm amazed at how Pullman can put so much depth and layers in, and with so much conviction.

The Secret Commonwealth has all the wonder and whimsy of the original series, colliding with the morality and mess of adulthood. I love how Pullman tied it back to La Belle Sauvage - though that book, while enjoyable, felt a little random at the time, it all makes sense now. Our understanding of the now-older characters and the politics established empowers us to be able to read the subtext intuitively. In many ways, Pullman has deliberately and consciously avoided the downfall of many sequels who fill their pages with bringing back old beloved characters for cameos but ultimately having to tell their story in the same parameters of perspective they did before. By establishing these new characters, allowing us to grow to love them and understand how their stories interact with Lyra's, our heroine is faced with a completely new challenge with new allies and new perspectives that she has to come to understand. That's how you write a sequel.

The Vegetarian

 Book Title: The Vegetarian

Author: Han Kang

Translator: Deborah Smith

Date Started: December 17th 2021

Date Completed: December 28th 2021

Genres: Contemporary, Magical Realism

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

The Vegetarian is perhaps the most well-known novel to come out of South Korea in recent years, at the top of many reading lists and recommended relentlessly - as it should be. But, oof, it's a heavy one.

I'd read a short story by Han Kang before, and while I remember enjoying it I couldn't say I could recall it very well. What I do remember was her writing style (translated by Deborah Smith), and the imagery of this novel brought it back to me as being both beautiful and shocking.

I thought that the parts of the book were perhaps separate stories for a bit due to the lack of names until I realised they're of course the same family unit. This is in some way deliberate though; even those connected have absolutely unique experiences and perspectives. The difference in gendered experiences is obviously the biggest gap here.

I actually find this book hard to talk about because it hit me on a very personal level, and yet some parts of it remain frustratingly elusive. It is one of those books that throws you into a void for a little bit after finishing, and perhaps that's a good thing.

Daughter of the Moon Goddess

 Book Title: Daughter of the Moon Goddess

Author: Sue Lynn Tan

Series: The Celestial Kingdom Duology #1

Date Started: December 10th 2021

Date Completed: December 17th 2021

Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Adventure

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

Ultimately, Daughter of the Moon Goddess wasn't for me, and the cutesy romance was not enough to keep me around. I made it 19% of the way through and had been considering giving up from very early on. I wanted to give it a chance and see how the early story developed, but more and more I realised most of my problems were with the writing style and general storytelling decisions which weren't going to change. I don't think it's a bad book, but its style is not something I want to invest more time into.

This book reads like middle grade, probably aspiring to jump into teen themes a little later in the series. There's so much inner monologuing (with a protagonist who collects information pretty slowly) and little actual drama in the outside world. Xingjin really didn't seem that bothered by anything happening to her, including what you'd imagine are some pretty traumatic experiences.

I'm also slightly sad that the worldbuilding is a little sparse. We get some little tidbits of what I believe to be Chinese myth (apologies if I'm a little off), but considering this is literally set on the moon there's very little description or aesthetic inclination to help us build what I imagine must be a fantastical empire on a celestial body - a really cool and unique thing to this story.

The reason I gave up where I did was the lack of direction in the actual story. Xingyin is supposed to get somewhere to escape the events at the beginning of the book, but she isn't very rushed to do so. I sort of forget she had that goal. Every obstacle she faces on the way to that goal is also very easily tied up without much input from the protagonist herself.

As I say, I don't think Daughter of the Moon Goddess isn't worth reading, it just isn't for me. I was expecting something aimed at a higher age range, whereas this reads very middle grade to me - nothing wrong with that, it just wasn't what I was expecting and lends itself to a few of my pet peeves that just makes reading it not as enjoyable an experience.

Warcross

 Book Title: Warcross

Author: Marie Lu

Series: Warcross #1

Date Started: November 27th 2021

Date Completed: December 10th 2021

Genres: Sci-Fi, Romance, Action, Mystery

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

I knew going in that Warcross was unlikely to be my favourite thing ever but I was hoping it would be entertaining. This was exactly what I got, so I shouldn't really complain - ultimately I just wasn't super convinced by anything or anyone in this book so while it was perfectly fine while reading it's certainly not going to stay in my memory for long. Its setup is quite familiar, the tropes are well-trodden, and its twists are predictable from the start (yet still dissatisfying when we got there).

Overall, my feelings are just that the book was... wishy-washy? The relationships are given a lot of importance towards the end with very little actual build-up throughout the book itself. The whole thing felt a little vague in general, with the timeline skipping chunks of events to progress the story faster, but leaving the development of side characters in the dust in the meanwhile.

The rules of the game was a little confusing and ended up inconsistent (each player has a 'role' in their team; for example, our protagonist Emika is an architect who is supposed to manipulate the level they're in to favour her team - yet all the actual rounds just end up as a race to collect power-ups? And then the black market is selling illegal power-ups that give people that ability to manipulate the level they're in?? What???). These action-heavy sections were then quite hard to follow though, honestly, the competition felt obsolete anyway, being used just as a framing device. We only properly see two rounds, with others skipped over and summarised, and the drama happening outside of them.

Warcross is a perfectly entertaining read if you don't mind not having a super fleshed-out world and story. I will say that, while you don't have to go into specifics of worldbuilding all the time, in a technologically-advanced worldwide game championship with rules that are being broken by the antagonist, it's sort of important that the system holds up so the reader can follow what's happening.

Hamnet

Book Title: Hamnet

Author: Maggie O'Farrell

Date Started: November 20th 2021

Date Completed: November 27th 2021

Genres: Historical

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

Hamnet is a magical, visceral, enchanting gem of a book. It's about a handful of people and their lives at a time in history we know a lot about in grand terms, but rarely think about in terms of day-to-day life. While parts of it are undoubtedly fictionalised, O'Farrell weaves a wonderful reimagining of the best storyteller perhaps ever to put pen to paper and, more importantly, the people around him.

I knew a little about Shakespeare's life, mostly from school, but O'Farrell makes the history accessible to those who may know nothing. And what a wonderful way to break the canon of male biographies by putting his wife truly at the centre as the protagonist. This isn't to say that the book doesn't celebrate his skills - it absolutely does, despite the fact that the name William Shakespeare isn't mentioned once within these pages.

I'm not going to comment on how accurate it is because I don't know and I don't think it wholly matters. O'Farrell has created one of the most otherworldly and yet insanely cathartic stories around very real people that we know precious little about. As she says at the end of the book, the overachiever William may have been in script didn't translate directly to records; he has an ironic lack of a paper trail. Even more so for the people at a lesser status; his wife, his mother, sister, daughters, even Hamnet himself who is only recorded in his birth and death records. What O'Farrell does is fill in the gaps with gold.

It's not rare knowledge to know that the play Hamlet, a personal favourite for myself and I'm sure millions of others, shared its name with Shakespeare's son who died young. What O'Farrell offers us is a reimagining of why this is so, found at the end of an epic and yet charmingly insular story about a husband and wife who had always tried to escape the world they lived in. It's simply magical to read and fall in love with Agnes, Eliza, Judith, Bartholomew, Susanna, the baker's wife, Edmond, Mary, (not such much Joan and John) - and, of course, Hamnet.

Sistersong

Book Title: Sistersong

Author: Lucy Holland

Date Started: November 13th 2021

Date Completed: November 20th 2021

Genres: Historical, Fantasy

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Two Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

I read halfway through Sistersong before I decided to call it a day. Ultimately, it was very slow and when events would eventually happen I had predicted them from twenty pages before. Perhaps my biggest issue was not being able to connect with the three protagonists; they may have been characterised differently, but their internal monologues were all the same combination of YA-reminiscent complaining and confusion with very little actual effort to do anything.

I wanted to give up every time I started a new chapter. There was nothing obviously wrong, I was just bored and the story felt like it was taking its sweet time to go anywhere. It's a tough one because not all stories need to establish a 'goal' that you're working towards, but I do think there needs to be a sense of working towards something. This book didn't have that, and I could probably call the final events even now.

I suppose what was even more frustrating about Sistersong was that the titular sisters did nothing at all; things just happened to them. They were ultimately really passive in the events of the story as far as halfway into the book (where I finally did give up). Yes, the cultural and societal positions they were existing within limited them in a lot of ways but even in their internal narratives they were never the ones actually challenging or questioning anything. They were merely reacting to other people's action. For feminist retellings especially (of folklore and fairytales no less), the passivity or activity of the characters really should be a priority to get right.

And look, just because it's got a corrupt priest and mentions the words 'magic' does not make it comparable to The Bear and the Nightingale. Looking through the reviews, it seems a lot of people were sold is as like Circe as well. I'm sure I see that other than it's a feminist retelling. Just ticking the boxes of oppressed women and loose folklore inspiration does not mean they're the same fairytale style or achieve the some feeling of vibrancy and wonder - nor do they necessarily intend to. Sistersong didn't need to be set up like that honestly as its telling a story from a different point in time (medieval?) where folklore meant something different to the people we follow, and their relationship to Christianity had its own battles. As much as I'm a sucker for comparisons to these books, I really don't think marketing them as such when it's simply inaccurate helps either the reader or the book.