Bookish Thoughts

It's been two years since I first read The Alloy of Law . With two new Mistborn  books out, I figured it was worth revisiting to refresh my memory. It helps that this is a pretty quick read. The Alloy of Law  is a mash-up of fantasy and conventional western tropes. There are fights on trains with masked bandits right alongside the magic and mythology of the first trilogy. It's fast-paced and a whole lot of fun ad did a good job of living up to my memory of it. The first few chapters are a bit rougher than I was expecting. But as soon as the action kicks in that doesn't matter at all. This book is just flat-out fun, and there's not much to detract from that. I do wish Lessie had survived beyond the prologue. The fridged girlfriend is a trope I'm beyond tired of. But Marasi and Ranette are fantastic, and even Steris is more interesting than I remember her being. I'm looking forward to the next two books in this series. I've been needing to dive back in t

I wasn't quite as enamored of Kushiel's Chosen  as I was of Kushiel's Dart . And I'm not entirely sure why that is. By all rights, I should have enjoyed this book just as much as the first one. It has all the fancy dresses, political intrigue, dastardly plots, and exquisite world-building of the first one. Unfortunately it's also missing some things. Hyacinthe isn't in it at all and Joscelin is missing for half the book as well. There isn't nearly as much sex, especially in the back half of the book. Phedre is much more isolated in this book than she was in the first one. There's an intriguing mystery here. Mellisande escaped at the end of the first book, and Phedre is determined to find her and bring her to justice. The question is where is she and what is she planning? It was great fun, running through possibilities and watching everything come together. But then the mystery is solved before the halfway point and Phedre is captured. She spends th

I was sad when I finished Terry Pratchett's Discworld  series last year. I've been reading it since 2008, and a part of me thought I could just keep reading it forever (andt to be fair, I am in the midst of an epic re-read right now). The series is more or less synonymous with Pratchett. But it turns out that he also wrote a lot of books that don't take place on the Discworld. I still have a lot of Pratchett books to work through. The first one I decided to pick up was Nation , which I've been hearing about for years and had a really hard time finding. It's a fantastic young-adult novel that subverts a bunch of old adventure tropes by giving most of the book's perspective to the island natives and having the potential romance turn into a strong, lifelong friendship. The book mostly focuses on Mau and Daphne, two survivors of the ostensible end of the world. Mau is the only survivor of his village when a tidal wave hits the island. Daphne is on a ship crossin

Cold Mountain is another book I skipped by in high school and always vaguely meant to come back to. When I saw it at a used book sale last summer I picked it up without really thinking about it. My friends all read it in AP English our senior year, while I slept my way through Hamlet . It might not have made much mark on my memory at all except that the movie also came out that year. Specifically, the movie was in theaters when I was in Mexico for Spring Break, and I went to see it with my host family. At the time I was mostly eager to be able to sit for two hours without having to think and speak in Spanish. The movie was dubbed, rather than subbed, and would therefore be easy for me to understand. I left the theater with a million thoughts buzzing through my brain, but the only one I was able to express to my host mother was "that was sad", and she didn't seem eager to discuss it beyond that. Over time, those thoughts faded until I was left with nothing more than the

Diving back in to Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga is always great fun. And while I was wary of this one at first, as it focuses on Ivan rather than Miles, I really ought to have known better. The book is part farce, part heist, part romance, It draws expertly on thirteen previous books of history such that the myriad misunderstandings and reveals had me laughing out loud at times The book starts with Ivan once again getting comandeered for a mission above his pay-grade. He is kidnapped and held hostage almost immediately. I was surprised when the action started up so quickly, and glad that it took a while to really slow down again. When it did slow down, it was mostly for a parade of cameos from Ivan's friends and family on Vorkosigan. I'd be more irritated with the slow middle if I wasn't having so much fun seeing all these characters again. It was especially fun to see them from Ivan's point of view, since it's so different from Miles'. But the heist portion

In Parable of the Talents , the sequel to Parable of the Sower , Octavia Butler continues her dystopian society, managing to make it both more horrifying and more optimistic than in the first book. The key to this optimism is the idea that God is Change. So long as people continuously work towards a better world, and setbacks can only be temporary. The collective goal of a more communal world, one that values education and kindness, brings out the best in the people Olamina recruits to her cause. Of course, her intensity and single-mindenedness also alienates some, most notably her own daughter and brother. The contradictory viewpoints are the main reason I enjoyed this book so much more than the first one. It's still largely a collection of Olamin'as journal entries, but this time it's been collected by her daughter, who provides her own commentary and also includes journals from Olamina's brother, Marc, and husband, Bankole. Olamina's words of unity and hope