Bookish Thoughts

 I've come to expect certain things from Alix E Harrow. A deep understanding of tropes and stories. A delight in playing with them. A strong sense of justice and equality. A strong, young woman (or women) fighting for change. Those are all present here. But this being a novella rather than a full novel, they're compressed and occasionally sketched in. I've read her other two books, so I can read between the lines here. But I still found myself wishing for something a little meatier in this Sleeping Beauty modernization. That's really more praise disguised as complaint. I love reading Harrow's work, and I just want more of it. There were some really interesting ideas here - stories being the connection between multiple dimensions, the bones of those stories remaining the same even as the details change, escaping (or not) from your own story. I'm excited that there's a sequel and I'll get to spend a bit more time in this world. Though I also hope that it i...

This book was practically perfect in every way. It follows a young girl named January who, at the beginning of the twentieth century, discovers a door to another world. Her guardian denies it's existence and nearly succeeds in making her doubt it, too. But then she finds a book about all those other worlds, which irrevocably alters her life's path. The interleaving of the two books is well done, and they build on each other in incredible ways as January discovers that she's closer to the center of the story than she ever expected to be. This is a book about stories. About the stories we lose ourselves in and the stories we tell to make sense of our past. It's about claiming your spot as protagonist in your own story while recognizing that everyone else is a protagonist, too. The world is full of stories, each story it's own world forever spawning more stories and worlds, contributing to the richness and vastness of life. It's also a book about colonialism, u...