House of Many Ways, Diana Wynne Jones

Book Title: House of Many Ways

Author: Diana Wynne Jones

Series: Howl #3

Date Started: January 12th 2024

Date Completed: January 18th 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

My personal goal for this year is to finish a bunch of book (and TV) series before I start any more, including some that have been waiting since childhood. Diana Wynne Jones' classics were of course introduced to me by the Ghibli adaptation of Howl's Moving Castle, though you can see her works' influence across so many more films than just that (the little magical dog Waif must have influenced Heen in Miyazaki's Howl).

Overall, this is a fun trilogy, with an innovative way of exploring a whole world and its characters by moving the narrative perspective to different strangers falling into Sophie and Howl's path. And Wynne Jones is so good at writing flawed protagonists that have tactile learning journeys throughout the story. We all know Howl's vanity and Sophie's short temper, but Charmain has to learn how to be an adult herself even in perhaps less dire circumstances.

There is a certain whimsical nature often missing from contemporary children's books in these older stories. Whether it's from a time without such cheap technology (though the first book does indeed include an 80s TV). The fantasy may be less 'high' but more self-assured in introducing new elements and worldbuilding without pages of explanation. Maybe that's saying something about modern storytelling sensibilities, but it is often nice to dip back into this style every now and then.

As always, the mystery resolves itself rather sweetly, though it did feel like Charmain had less to do with it than the previous heroes of the series. I think I certainly enjoyed it less than I imagine a younger reader would find it. But, as Neil Gaiman says, Dianna Wynne Jones is simply the best at writing magic, and it's nice to have her iconic trilogy off my reading list.

Tehanu, Ursula le Guin

Book Title: Tehanu

Author: Ursula Le Guin

Series: Earthsea Cycle #4

Date Started: January 4th 2024

Date Completed: January 12th 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

Ursula Le Guin's stories are truly something else. Engaging and exciting, even with such an unconventional plot structure, Tehanu continues the Earthsea Cycle (written several years after the original three books) in a confident sweep of grand and yet quiet magic.

The first three books are wonderful (particularly the Tombs of Atuan, which of course meant this revisiting of Tenar's story would be magical), and yet Tehanu is poignantly distinct. We've had epic odysseys and dramatic battles of good versus evil, but what comes after? When the hero is wounded, who do they go to to heal? And perhaps that person they go to is the hero all along. This fourth instalment is a most beautiful, thoughtful and fierce feminist piece - which acknowledges various points of view and doesn't pass judgment, but finds some universal balance and equality that so many flail trying to construct and therefore miss altogether.

As a contemporary reader, having experienced the waves of feminism through literature in my life, there is a whispered might in Le Guin's storytelling. She doesn't have to say Tenar is just as powerful as Ged on the page, or even have Tenar so self-assured of it herself. Her actions, her history, and her day-to-day strength when even the great archmage is cowered make the reader know it.

Old-fashioned epic fantasy has such a good grasp of time and space - making villages and adventures and creatures like dragons feel truly giant and life-size to the reader. As fantasy, particularly high fantasy, has evolved I feel it's become richer in descriptions and deliberate worldbuilding (we'll give a pass to Tolkien and his obsession with every damn tree in a forest), but has then started to lose this assumed suspension of disbelief. Le Guin doesn't need to describe how anything magical fits into her world because it just does, it only needs a passing comment. Furthermore, Tehanu's ties to the earlier books enhance the vividity of the story but also goes to show how vast Earthsea as a world is. This story is so far removed from the original three and yet is playing out somewhere in the distance. Such diversity and distinction exist in the real world, they don't have to be meticulously tied with perfect strings to each other as modern readers have come to expect.

As an afterthought, I also want to mention the Complete Illustrated Edition I'm working my way through. Not only are the illustrations from Charles Vess desperately beautiful, but this edition also comes along with commentary from Le Guin looking back on her novels. The novels themselves are great, but her afterwards are really something else. Her retrospective reflections on what she was doing, what was motivating her, and even the world's reactions, are so poignant and enhance the whole experience of reading the stories. In such a down-to-earth way, the mother of fantasy takes her biggest bow.

Sisters of Sword and Shadow, Laura Bates

Book Title: Sisters of Sword and Shadow

Author: Laura Bates

Date Started: December 31st 2023

Date Completed: January 4th 2024

Genres: Historical, Adventure, Fantasy

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

I was caught off guard by how much I fell head over heels for this book. It's an epic tale of adventure and belonging, going places you don't expect but are perfectly conceived, almost sidelining as a spin-off to Arthurian legend. While it's seemingly targeted at a younger audience, it's still massively enjoyable for older readers.

While the main narrative focuses on Cass and her journey to becoming a knight, the side plots are the real bursts of colour in this tapestry. Whether it's her relationship with secondary characters, coming to terms with her past, the relationships of the sisterhood's leaders, the politics of land ownership and more, it paints this whole story with so much more detail. But it never, even in moments of drama or angst, do they overwhelm the main story being told or the backbone of the heroine. Cass remains Cass the whole way through and everything else just makes it more vibrant.

Some may argue that the themes explored aren't suitable for a younger audience, but I think the tough things are done in such a responsible way. Obviously, misogyny was going to be core to this story, but Bates also touches on things like sexual violence, classism and mental health sensitively and without being graphic. She also focuses on the emotional experiences surrounding them, and how to move on with a support system.

I actually hadn't realised the author was Laura Bates of the Everyday Sexism project until I got to the acknowledgements at the end. While I'm not overly familiar with that book, it went a long way to explaining how this book had managed to be so exciting and fun, but accessible, political and brave. With so much detail, fun exploration and representation, it was awesome. To put it simply, I would've been obsessed with it as a child, and it was a pretty great ride as an adult too.

The House of Fortune

Book Title: The House of Fortune

Author: Jessie Burton

Series: The Miniaturist #2

Date Started: November 23rd 2023

Date Completed: December 30th 2023

Genres: Historical

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

When the BBC television adaptation of The Miniaturist finished, I remember asking when the next episode was - I was so sure that it couldn’t be Nella’s ending. I read the book as I’d loved the show so much, and felt similarly. While I loved it, there was always more story to tell, and now we have it.

What stands out most to me of Burton’s writing is how gorgeous the flow of prose is. It feels like water you’re floating through with almost no effort, spinning on its wheel to tell us the story like we’re in a dream. And the beautiful gentle magical realism, just like the first book, is there just to offer a few possibilities to the characters that would otherwise be out of reach (which is exactly what magical realism is for, and so rarely executed to proper affect).

There are some ways in which the story was a little predictable, but no less enjoyable. I found it especially interesting that, just as the characters do, I felt that my empathy for everyone’s position and understanding of the situation as a whole evolved throughout the book. To begin I felt far more aligned with Nella and found Thea frankly spoilt and naive, but by the end there’s a far more balanced and sympathetic view of everyone, and that’s really the point of the story itself. That’s really sophisticated writing to make a reader feel that, as well as understand.

The House of Fortune stands as it’s own story, though you probably do want to read The Miniaturist first for the full breadth of what’s going on. It does take a few steps away from the political core of the first novel, and is ultimately playing with lower stakes, but it’s more involved in generational trauma, different generations of women, and the moving landscape of time and how that affects how people are forced to evolve to prosper, and even just survive.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Book Title: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Author: Suzanne Collins

Series: The Hunger Games #0

Date Started: December 14th 2023

Date Completed: December 24th 2023

Genres: Dystopian, Action, Romance

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

It’s been a long long time since I read the original Hunger Games trilogy and, revisiting this series after a long time, I’m impressed by how well it holds up and how nuanced it still persists to be. Collins’ stories really are the pinnacle of Young Adult fiction, even if the genre has grown and changed in its own ways - it’s actually curious how harrowing and grim some of the original gamechangers in YA could be, but still execute heart wrenching hope. I’m not here to moan about the current landscape, but I think it’s fair to say that achieving that balance is sometimes massively underrated and often forgotten.

Prequels to existing series - especially ones about the villain’s origins - are often not for me. Many authors find it hard to write their protagonists truly escalating to the levels of predisposed evils required to fit into the main series. But damn, Collins pulls it off. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is really a fantastically well executed exploration of entitlement and toxic masculinity. And one where, lo and behold, the woman doesn’t have to tragically die to motivate it!

Of course, my brain can’t help but compare it to the movie adaptation, which I saw first but did persuade me to jump back into Collins’ writing. The adaptation smooths out some of the unnecessary bulk and fiddly strings of events, but also misses the real depth of entitlement that motivates Coriolanus through most of the novel. I also found the more overt camaraderie and teamwork in the Academy students - even when pitted against each other - really interesting as that was mostly revamped into pure poisonous relationships for the film.

Similarly to how impressed I was by the film (quite by surprise I have to admit!), I’m so happy I was persuaded to read this prequel. It’s an exciting, political, well-balanced and thoroughly enjoyable addition to the original trilogy, strong enough to stand on its own with its own story but actually adding depth and understanding to just how much Snow really must hate Katniss all those years later.

The Illusions

Book Title: The Illusions

Author: Liz Hyder

Date Started: November 6th 2023

Date Completed: November 23rd 2023

Genres: Historical, Adventure, Fantasy, Mystery

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

All done with kindness. It’s a phrase that’s repeated throughout this novel but characters and is even handwritten by the author herself at the start from the lovely signed edition I found at my local independent bookshop - in fact it’s the reason I was drawn to pick it up, and it feels so utterly perfect for the novel I then got to read.

Perhaps that’s misleading, because it was also the promise of two female heroines from the worlds of theatre and filmmaking that fully convinced me. From a personal place, I fell in love with theatre from a young age and then fell even further head over heels for the moving image, partially because of a French filmmaker called Georges Méliès (and later Alice Guy-Blanche) who was one of the first to invent in camera trickery and ‘special effects’. I go into this because this book is palpable for that same adoration of performance and almost literal magic both from an audience seat and through a camera. This book was a joy to read because it was like reliving my discovery of those things all over again, and not least through two fantastically courageous and inventive heroines who were finding their own feet in those spaces all by themselves.

That’s not to say that this book relies on a personal love of these performance arts, it’s a fantastically exciting and touching book full of twists and humour, and even literal magic at some points. It’s a book that perhaps tries to tick too many boxes - it’s a shame the magic didn’t actually end up playing an integral part, some exposition ended up easily forgotten, and the romance was drawn out - but it’s one that takes you with it as it sneaks into all the nooks and crannies. You live alongside these characters (and it’s a hefty cast to keep track of) for a short while, and by the time you get to the end it’s unputdownable.

I would say it leans slightly towards the Young Adult audience though it’s marketed as adult, with that token ensemble of peers and the often lighthearted resolutions to what in other contexts could be very dark themes. But regardless it’s a genuine enjoyable read I wish I could experience all over again. A warm hug of a book, and one personally beloved to me.

A Court of Mist and Fury

Book Title: A Court of Mist and Fury

Author: Sarah J. Maas

Series: A Court of Thorns and Roses #2

Date Started: October 7th 2023

Date Completed: November 6th 2023

Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Adventure

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

I took a long break from this series after reading the first book back when it came out. Looking back on my review for that first book, I really wasn't getting on with Maas' follow-up to the Throne of Glass books (one of my most beloved series), but was convinced by a friend of mine to give it another go as, perhaps obviously, the story was just getting started.

Having dipped back into this world, I can see what she meant. It definitely improves on the first book, and clearly had been planned to set that first novel up in a certain way to then pull a signature Sarah J. Maas twist and flip everything on its head to be even better than you expected. While this is, of course, satisfying and Feyre and co are quickly on the right track in this second novel, I do wish it hadn't taken its sweet time to get Feyre to a point of something other than complete misery and despair. It's just not fun reading.

This second book was also far more enjoyable because we finally have our famous Maas ensembles back! While the heroines and their love interests are inevitably at the heart of all chaos in these books, it's undeniable that most of us are waiting on tenterhooks to see the supporting characters do their thing. And, as usual, A Court of Mist and Fury does not disappoint and even puts some new personalities and dynamics to the forefront for us to enjoy.

I did still feel like this book was very heavy on the romance and pretty sparse on action past the basic plot beats, but with all the pining done with impressively quickly (for the most part), I'm looking forward to seeing where the storylines of the rest of the series go now that Feyre and Rhysand are aligned and united. Though a common misconception, the thrill doesn't have to just be in the chase!