Category: Book Review
My Day Off
I know, I know. I don’t usually take days off during the week but today I’m going to. I’m using this day to catch up on some other stuff in Real Life as well as do a little bit more reading and reviewing. (It’s hard to focus on reading when you don’t know if you’re going to lose your book blog, like on Monday and Tuesday.)
Anyway, here’s an interesting article by Chuck Wendig about self-publishing I think you’d be interested in. It’s definitely some food for thought:
Slushy Glut Slog: Why The Self-Publishing Shit Volcano Is A Problem
Othello by William Shakespeare
(Cover picture courtesy of Monster Marketplace.)
One of the greatest of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Othello tells the story of a Moorish general who earns the enmity of his ensign Iago when he passes him over for a promotion. Bleak and unsparing, this play offers a masterly portrait of an archvillain and an astute psychological study of the nature of evil. Explanatory footnotes.
Hmm, how does one review Shakespeare? Not easily, as it turns out. (This is my third attempt at doing a review for Othello.) So I’ll basically just discuss the play and my thoughts about it.
One thing I always have liked about Shakespeare is his characters. His characters are vibrant, complex beings that stick with you long after you’ve finished the play. Othello is one of them, but Iago is my favourite out of the whole play. He’s a fascinating character and his soliloquies are some of my favourites in all of Shakespeare’s plays. Iago’s interesting in that he doesn’t really have a concrete motive for hurting Othello. Is it because he’s miserable and wants other people to be miserable too? Could it be he’s jealous of Othello’s rank? Or does he see Othello’s good traits and want to turn them evil to bring Othello down to his own level? It’s certainly up for debate.
Desdemona is fascinating as well in her own way. She dared to love Othello, a black man, in a time when racism was completely socially acceptable. She even married Othello against the wishes of her father, which was extremely rare in those days even if you don’t consider the societal taboos on interracial marriages. In the end her only fault was trusting her new husband, the man she loved.
In some ways Othello is one of my favourite plays by Shakespeare not just because of the characters but that every scene advances the plot. There’s always a hint of what is to come maybe in a dialogue between two characters, Iago’s soliloquies or even just in the mood of the scene itself from the stage directions. I sped through Othello like I have with no other Shakespeare play and it’s one that I really enjoyed even though it was pretty easy to predict the ending.
As for this Dover Thrift Edition, it’s adequate but nothing more. There are notes about definitions of words that have changed over time but if you’re someone looking for an analysis of the play I’d recommend a different edition.
So overall? One of the best Shakespeare plays I’ve read so far.
I give this play 5/5 stars.
Crewel by Gennifer Albin
(Cover picture courtesy of Xpresso Reads.)
Incapable. Awkward. Artless.
That’s what the other girls whisper behind her back. But sixteen-year-old Adelice Lewys has a secret: She wants to fail.Gifted with the ability to weave time with matter, she’s exactly what the Guild is looking for, and in the world of Arras, being chosen to work the looms is everything a girl could want. It means privilege, eternal beauty, and being something other than a secretary. It also means the power to manipulate the very fabric of reality. But if controlling what people eat, where they live, and how many children they have is the price of having it all, Adelice isn’t interested.
Not that her feelings matter, because she slipped and used her hidden talent for a moment. Now she has one hour to eat her mom’s overcooked pot roast. One hour to listen to her sister’s academy gossip and laugh at her dad’s jokes. One hour to pretend everything’s okay. And one hour to escape.
Because tonight, they’ll come for her.
This time I can honestly say it was not the cover of this book that caught my attention. Rather, it was the title. Crewel. What’s a crewel? Is it a dystopian city, a deliberate misspelling of cruel for some sort of theme in the book or something else? It was my curiosity that made me read the blurb and I soon learned it was a weaving term. A teenage girl in a dystopian world where time itself is woven? That’s pretty unique. So of course I bought the book.
Gennifer Albin’s book is one of the very few dystopian novels I’ve read that has such an amazing, unique premise. If the rest of the book were trash, you could read it for her world-building alone. Good thing the rest of the book wasn’t trash, though. She doesn’t dump too much info on you at once and just when you think you know all about Arras, you learn something completely different that throws the conventions for a loop. And you know what? All the shocking behind-the-scenes things that ordinary citizens in Arras don’t know about make sense considering the kind of beautiful yet horrible world they live in.
Adelice was an interesting protagonist. She was defiant but she also learned when to fight and when to keep her mouth shut as she began her apprenticeship as a Spinster. Yes, she made some pretty big mistakes because of her naivete but she learned from them and became a better person. Adelice saw through all of the glitz and glamour and actually tried to find a way to hide her talents so she could escape. Finally, a smart YA protagonist! And when she falls for a guy that’s obviously not a good choice for her, she learns to smother her feelings and move on. What a novel concept!
The plot starts off pretty fast in the beginning but then it slows down a little to allow you to catch your breath in this crazy new world. As Adelice learns about the world around her, so do we and it’s a more natural pace than a lot of books. Crewel focuses heavily on character development but it’s never at the expense of the plot. There’s always this feeling of suspense and dread just lurking in the background, ready to materialize and wreak havoc on Adelice’s plans. Especially toward the end of the novel when Cormac’s true intentions are made painfully clear as he goes from run-of-the-mill pervert to something a little more dangerous.
This is Gennifer Albin’s debut novel so I think we can expect great things from her in the future. I can’t wait to read the rest of the Crewel World trilogy!
I give this book 5/5 stars.
Daughters of the Nile by Stephanie Dray
(Cover picture courtesy of Historically Obsessed.)
Based on the true story of Cleopatra’s daughter…
After years of abuse as the emperor’s captive in Rome, Cleopatra Selene has found a safe harbor. No longer the pitiful orphaned daughter of the despised Egyptian Whore, the twenty year old is now the most powerful queen in the empire, ruling over the kingdom of Mauretania—an exotic land of enchanting possibility where she intends to revive her dynasty.
With her husband, King Juba II and the magic of Isis that is her birthright, Selene brings prosperity and peace to a kingdom thirsty for both. But when Augustus Caesar jealously demands that Selene’s children be given over to him to be fostered in Rome, she’s drawn back into the web of imperial plots and intrigues that she vowed to leave behind.
Determined and resourceful, Selene must shield her loved ones from the emperor’s wrath, all while vying with ruthless rivals like King Herod. Can she find a way to overcome the threat to her marriage, her kingdom, her family, and her faith? Or will she be the last of her line?
The main strength of the Cleopatra’s Daughter trilogy is the characters. The characters are so real that when they get hurt, you feel the hurt right along with them. Believe me, Selene gets hurt a lot.
In the first book you have Selene as a frightened child, a captive in Rome. In Song of the Nile you have her as an emotionally stunted teenager suffering from a violent rape and being repudiated by a husband who refuses to listen to her side of the story. Now, finally, in Daughters of the Nile Selene is approaching a state of contentment. She’s made her peace with Juba and begins to love him. She’s ruling Mauretania by his side and doing it extremely well. And, most importantly of all, she’s finally happy. Selene knows what she wants out of life and after a little bit of soul-searching in Rome, is prepared to give up her mother’s throne for a chance at happiness. I knew what the ending was going to be, but I felt the tears come out just the same. It’s hard to lose a character you’ve grown to love yet Stephanie Dray brought her trilogy to an amazingly satisfying end. Very few authors can do that.
The plot slows down a little more in the beginning than in the previous books as we get a bigger picture of Selene’s domestic life. When she’s called back to Rome things heat up quite a bit and even I was in doubt about her final decision when it came to Augustus. Even though the ending takes place in Mauretania it’s far from boring as Selene comes into conflict with her teenage daughter Isidora who doesn’t want to be queen like her mother. But really, even if the plot was totally boring in this book it wouldn’t matter. The characters are that compelling.
One of the things that I really enjoy about Stephanie Dray’s writing is that it has very vivid imagery. I can feel the hot air in Mauretania, the stench of the dye factories, the more cool interior of the palace, etc. In Rome I can hear the sounds of thousands of voices on a market day, smell the Tiber in summer and walk through Augustus’ villa to see the beautiful mosaics. Stephanie Dray transports her reader back to a different time and makes them feel at home there which was why when the novel ended it took a few seconds for me to remember where I was. Yes, her writing is just that good.
If you haven’t read Stephanie Dray’s Cleopatra’s Daughter trilogy you need to. It’s by far one of the best books about Cleopatra Selene’s life and it’s extremely well-written. You can’t go wrong with it and I’m very anxious to see what Stephanie Dray chooses to write about next.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government “rehabilitation camp.” She might have survived the mysterious disease that’s killed most of America’s children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control.
Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones.
When the truth comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. Now she’s on the run, desperate to find the one safe haven left for kids like her-East River. She joins a group of kids who escaped their own camp. Liam, their brave leader, is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she aches for him, Ruby can’t risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents.
When they arrive at East River, nothing is as it seems, least of all its mysterious leader. But there are other forces at work, people who will stop at nothing to use Ruby in their fight against the government. Ruby will be faced with a terrible choice, one that may mean giving up her only chance at a life worth living.
There are very few books out there that I would say insulted my intelligence, but this is absolutely one of them.
First off, let me start with the premise. Some disease mysteriously kills pretty much all children and teenagers but those that survive get mind powers ranging from math skills to erasing memories. I could live with that somewhat unbelievable premise if not for what happened next: all the kids in the country that survived were rounded up and taken to internment camps. Sure, some parents would be terrified by their kids but honestly? I very much doubt that the majority of parents would willingly give up their surviving children to the government as Alexandra Bracken imagines. Also, the sheer cruelty all of the guards in the camp show toward the low-risk children (blues and greens) is ridiculous. There would be some displays of even a little bit of human compassion but Bracken just made a total caricature out of the guards.
I could ignore the premise if the writing wasn’t so awful. But it was awful, truly awful. There are big long scenes where absolutely nothing happens then action appears out of nowhere and suddenly we’re back to a boring scene with no transition in between. When the skip tracer appears and Ruby hits her head (or something like that) I flipped to the next chapter and went ‘huh?’. She was suddenly back in the van with no explanation as to what happened. Transitions are important, people!
You’d have to go through The Darkest Minds with a fine tooth comb to actually find anything vaguely resembling a plot. It’s basically a futuristic road trip with talking heads in a dark room! Alexandra Bracken doesn’t feel the need to describe pretty much any of the characters Ruby meets when she runs away from her captors until at least 300 pages in or so. It was like listening to a bunch of people talk in a pitch black room. People that all sounded the same. There was really no difference in the patterns of speech of Suzume, Chubs and Liam. They all sounded like the same character.
As for Ruby, don’t get me started. She hates herself and feels like she can’t trust anyone, which is completely understandable because she lived in what turned out to be a concentration camp for children. Yet Liam waltzes in and in no time at all she trusts him completely! I don’t trust people that quickly and I haven’t experienced anything anywhere near the level of what Ruby has experienced. It’s just not believable. And when they finally meet the Slip Kid and Ruby learns who she is, she immediately trusts him. As if someone with his background could be trusted! Does she remember who his father is? Ugh, just kill me now.
I can’t recommend this book to anyone. It’s a waste of paper and ink and is an insult to the intelligence of its target audience.
I give this book 0.5/5 stars.