Bookish Thoughts

I picked this one up again because I needed something light and quick and happy. It is still all of those things while also being wonderful and fun. This could easily become one of those go-to books whenever I need a bit of a pick-me-up

In the far future (and also the distant past and also right now) two groups are fighting for control. They send operatives back and forth through time to ensure certain outcomes, open up possibilities, make sure something does or does not happen. Two of those operatives (Red and Blue) make contact, begin writing letters, and ultimately fall in love. It's a classic story, made fresh. By fresh, I mean utterly delightful. It's a high concept version of a tale as old as time. The settings are delightfully bizarre, but the emotions are completely recognizable. The language elevates this, making the whole book a wondrous puzzle to be solved. (Shortly after Red referred to Blue as "Da-Ba-Dee" I played the song for my son, and I've been singing it to myself ever since.) It feels like a fun game you're playing with yourself (or the characters/authors are playing with each other) right until the heartbreak shows up and you discover just how invested you are in Red and...

The people over at Serial Box are on a mission to bring back serialized fiction. They talk about combining the best aspects of novels and television shows, but this isn't really a new idea. It's just been dressed up a bit for the internet. Stories are broken down into "seasons" and "episodes". Theoretically, each episode should be a self-contained story that takes about 45 minutes to read (just like a TV show!), and the episodes build into an arc that forms a season. (And eventually extends into multiple seasons. Just like TV! Except you're reading, not watching.) The biggest problem with this format is that you can cram a lot more information into a 45-minute television show than you can into an equivalent-length short story. So a lot of the early episodes are made up of broad strokes. It takes a while, longer than normal, to start caring about the characters and what they're doing. But I did eventually start caring. I read the entire first sea...

The sixth book in The Craft Sequence returns to Kai, adding a nice level of symmetry to the series, even if this book is setting on a new era. We now have two books about Tara in Alt Coloumb, two about Caleb Altemoc and his father in Dresedial Lex, and now two about Kai and Izza and the Blue Lady from Kavekana, though this book doesn't take place in Kavekana. Ruin of Angels  sees Kai and Izza travel to Agdel Lex, a new city that the Iskari imposed on the ruins of Alikand after the God Wars. But Alikand is still there, hidden beneath and behind and around the forced order of Agdel Lex. And beneath both of them is the dead city, where the wars are still going on, frozen in a single moment. This is a book about dualities. About the many faces a single person takes on in different situations. About the many different places a single city can be. About history seen from multiple points of view. It's about a pair of sisters who don't entirely know how to relate to each other...

This book may have supplanted Full Fathom Five  as my favorite book of Gladstone's Craft Sequence  (so far). While that one was a little tighter and more focused, this one was just so epic and complicated and perfect. Gladstone has referred to the first five book of the series as functioning somewhat like the first season of a television show. Using that metaphor, this was the perfect finale to a number of arcs, even though it's not the last book chronologically. Four Roads Cross  takes us back to Alt Coulomb, with Tara and Abelard and Shale. A big part of the reason I loved this book is that Cat and Raz are back, and they might be my favorite minor characters in the entire series. It also draws on every other book, tying off loose threads that I barely realized were hanging and deftly introducing a bunch of new characters. With this book I feel like I finally have a handle on how this world works and how magic works in it. Gladstone has created a staggeringly complic...

I've been really enjoying Max Gladstone's Craft   Sequence so far. In fact, it has a good chance of being one of my favorite series. The themes, the characters, and the writing have all made me fall in love with this world and these stories. That said, I wonder if Gladstone might not have made a mistake in the way he ordered the books. The first five books were not written in internal chronological order. The publication order is 3, 2, 5, 1, 4. For the first three this didn't make much of a difference, since they all focused on different characters. But Last First Snow  is a direct prequel to Two Serpents Rise , and I think it drained some of the tension from the book. I actually liked Last First Snow better than Two Serpents Rise. The characters were more interesting, and I liked having multiple points of view. The plot was structured much better. And I loved learning more about Elayne Kevarian who has been such an enigmatic figure thus far. Gladstone does an excellen...

Full Fathom Five , the third book in Max Gladston's Craft Sequence , was fully as wonderful as the first book. Maybe moreso. It felt a bit more focused than the first one, though that could be because I've learned enough about this world at this point to take certain things for granted. This book mostly follows two different characters: disgraced priestess Kai, who made idols to order for investors before her boss sidelined her for a foolish attempt to save a dying idol's life, and street urchin Izza, who has begun to chafe at the way the other urchins rely on her, especially because she'll have to leave them soon, one way or another. I spent a lot of this book thinking about The Good Place , which keeps asking what we owe to each other. Full Fathom Five  is more concerned with asking who we owe it to. How do you define a community and how do you recognize kindred spirits. Belief, the book says, is what defines a community. And that makes sense in a series about g...

I didn't like this book as much as Three Parts Dead . I don't know how much of that is sophomore slump and how much of it was just Gladstone changing things up a bit. Ultimately I did enjoy this book and found it just as interesting and thought-provoking as the first one. But it took me a lot longer to get there. At least part of that is because Caleb is a difficult protagonist. And he's the only point of view we get in this book, aside from a few brief interludes. So we have a much narrower scope and a lot of time spent with a character that I took a long time to warm up to. I suppose it's no surprise that I wasn't as immediately or intensely excited about this book. The thing about Caleb is that he's content. And that's just not that interesting. He likes his work. He likes his life. He's not hugely passionate about anything, but neither is he deeply dissatisfied. His biggest problem is his relationship with his father, who was a priest of the fall...

Every now and then I come across a book that feels like it was written just for me: Sunshine , Among Others , Mr. Fox . I love these books deeply, but I have a hard time recommending them to people. They're so specific to my interests and so dear to my heart that I worry what will happen if my friends don't end up loving them like I do. Three Parts Dead  is another book that feels like it was written just for me. But this one feels like it was written for all my friends, too. Instead of holding this one close to my heart, I'm shoving it at all of my friends. Upon finishing it, I immediately gushed about it on a friend's Facebook page. I told another friend she had to read it immediately. I'm considering slipping it into my husband's suitcase for his upcoming business trip. I want to talk about this book (this series). I want to get excited and point things out to my friends and see all the things I missed. This isn't a book that spoke directly to my soul...