Reading She Who Became the Sun, I repeatedly felt the urge to grab the main characters by the collar and yell, “for the love of god, get some fucking Reading She Who Became the Sun, I repeatedly felt the urge to grab the main characters by the collar and yell, “for the love of god, get some fucking help”. The sequel excited no such compassionate impulse in me; instead, I was left wondering if bathing in holy water would be a viable solution to exorcise the monsters summoned by Shelley Parker-Chan.
There is no other way to put it: most of the characters in this novel are straight up demonic. There is villainy, and then there is Wang Baoxiang. I have never before read a fantasy book that could have so easily been a product of Dostoevskij’s imagination. The main cast members constantly one-up each other in terms of cruelty and depravity; just when you think it can’t possibly get any worse, someone shows up with a jar of pickled hands and you lose another shred of faith in humanity. I’d truly like to know what the author was going through while drafting this, because despite her claim that she doesn’t write grimdark, He Who Drowned the World very much reads like grimdark to me. It’s not so much that the violence is especially graphic, it’s that there is almost no respite from it.
The tone is markedly more somber than in the prequel, and the narrative is permeated with a sense of oppressive hopelessness and despair. I can already tell that the main criticism readers will level at this book is that it’s too depressing and cruel. While I understand where this sentiment comes from, I’ll admit that I wasn’t overly bothered by the turn things took. While the story could have come off as voyeuristic trauma porn in the hands of a less skilled writer, Parker-Chan managed to craft such three-dimensional and compelling characters that I found myself morbidly fascinated by their horrifying descent into madness.
It helps that the plot is fast-paced and action-packed, full of twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat. Despite knowing from the beginning how the series would end—this is, after all, a retelling of the first Ming emperor’s ascent to power—I could never predict what was going to happen next; in fact, I realized at one point that I had fifteen pages left in my e-book and the story hadn’t wrapped up at all. I think it’s truly a remarkable feat to keep one’s readers guessing until the last chapter of a five-hundred page tome.
What really made the book so enjoyable for me, however, were the characters. While the protagonist Zhu is definitely morally ambiguous, her antagonists reach such hellish levels of perversion that she almost seems like a well-adjusted human in comparison. I was captivated by their tragic arcs, their Machiavellian schemes, and their supremely twisted relationships with one another. Ultimately, this is a story about the value of self-acceptance and the devastating consequences of social rejection and self-hate, particularly in relation to gender identity and expression. I think the author effectively showed how self-loathing and bigotry can destroy not just the individual, but society as a whole.
This won’t be a book for everyone. If you like your characters to be at least partially redeemable, you might be better off skipping it. It was, however, a book for me. At the end of the day, I am a simple Wuthering Heights fan who incessantly gravitates towards tormented villains doomed by the narrative.
Many thanks to Tor and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC....more
How this book managed to slip under everyone’s radar despite being the best fantasy of the year is a mystery to me.
Part epic folk tale, part meta-narrHow this book managed to slip under everyone’s radar despite being the best fantasy of the year is a mystery to me.
Part epic folk tale, part meta-narrative exploration of family and identity, The Spear Cuts Through Water is a work of fiction so perfectly conceived and executed that I will be personally offended if it doesn’t swoop up all the awards next season. Jimenez creates a puzzle of intersecting storylines that fit together like Russian dolls, cleverly employing different perspectives, tenses, and settings to obfuscate his intentions before finally revealing his cards to the reader at the most climactic moment.
Nothing is left to chance; from beginning to end, the narrator presents you with the exact amount of information you need to follow the story, without ever revealing too much or too little. The author trusts you to trust him and let yourself be carried away into an ancestral world where the narrative is out of your control. I can’t remember the last time I felt such a sense of wonder while reading a book: the atmospheric writing is reminiscent of Erin Morgenstern and Neil Gaiman, but Jimenez keeps a tight grip on the plot, never allowing the story to meander or the descriptions to veer into self-indulgence.
This book is an ode to storytelling. It’s a tale told by a grandmother to her favorite grandson, in a kitchen filled with smoke and the smells of a country lost to memory. It’s a foundational myth on the value of love and compassion, a family history, and a play re-enacted by ghosts in a dream theater. Above all, it is a love story stronger than gods and time....more
I can’t believe you read this book in grade nine and thought it a charming, entertaining tale full of lovable characters. Compared to Dear teenage me,
I can’t believe you read this book in grade nine and thought it a charming, entertaining tale full of lovable characters. Compared to you, I’m a little chickenshit who gets scared way too easily. If I were your parents, I would not let you pick this up without first making sure you know what the themes are, and without discussing it together afterwards—but then again, your parents would probably be too embarrassed to explain what exactly the vampire kiss is supposed to symbolize.
Above all, I’m a little concerned about your obsession with Lestat. I know you think he’s the sexiest male protagonist ever written, after Heathcliff of course (that’s a whole other can of worms we don’t have time to open now). However, I would gently encourage you to take a more critical look at his actions, especially the part where he abuses, manipulates, and stalks Louis and Claudia for literal decades. That’s… not great. Not really something a good love interest would do.
Speaking of Claudia: don’t blame her for “ruining Louis and Lestat’s relationship”. It’s really not her fault Lestat is a terminal narcissist and a whiny baby. No matter how hard the media try to convince you that women are to blame for everything, they aren’t—especially when the women in question are literal children who shouldn’t be involved in adult romance anyway.
Did you really read all of this without getting even a little bit frightened? If yes, you’re a badass. I wish I was just as unfazed by murder, violence, and gore as you are. Maybe that’s the beauty in reading uncritically, pouring yourself into a story with no ulterior motive or thought: you’re too immersed to take note of what goes on around your favorite vampires, and can just brush off the atrocities they commit as necessary evils. Chances are I will never be able to experience books like that again, but I’m glad you managed to do it before I came around to spoil your fun....more
For most of my adult life, I thought that horror just wasn’t for me. I associated the genre with older, male authors like H. P. Lovecraft or Stephen KFor most of my adult life, I thought that horror just wasn’t for me. I associated the genre with older, male authors like H. P. Lovecraft or Stephen King, whose work I never found especially compelling or relatable. The kind of characters and fears that their fiction centered seemed very distant from my lived experience, and their massive popularity placed them on a cultural pedestal that I simply wasn’t interested in challenging. What’s the point, I thought, in reading things that were designed to scare you? Isn’t real life terrifying enough?
All this changed when I stumbled upon a short story collection titled Things We Lost in the Fire. I read it because it came highly recommended by people I trusted, and only realized it was horror halfway through the book. By that point, I was so captivated by Mariana Enríquez’s twisted imagination that I just wanted more. So I started dipping my toes in horror fiction written by women and queer people, only to discover that I did, in fact, love to read stuff that was designed to scare me. What makes horror good, I learned, is precisely its ability to sublimate societal and cultural anxieties into fictional scenarios; to create an imaginary bubble—a safe space, if you will—where nightmarish ideas can be explored and dissected with no real-life consequence.
And it’s this facet of the genre that Enríquez excels at. Her ability to explore the dark side of womanhood, family relations, and Latin American history has always been apparent in her writing, but her craft reaches new heights in Our Share of Night. This monumental novel grapples with four decades of Argentinian history, dissecting how collective traumas caused by dictatorship, colonialism, and poverty impact individual characters and their relationships with one another.
Through the eyes of a violent, traumatized father and his young son, we come face to face with the machinations of a corrupt cult whose ultra-rich members will stop at nothing to become even more powerful. Greed, the author seems to say, is an insatiable, self-cannibalizing monster that exploits the marginalized before eventually destroying the privileged, too. I know cannibalism has basically become a trend in contemporary fiction, but Enríquez uses this trope with skill and purpose to make a point about how the ruling classes have historically used occultism to try and further their agendas. Speaking of which: I don’t know who wrote the copy for the American edition, but this is very much not a vampire novel. How anyone could read the book and come to this conclusion is a mystery to me.
At the end of the day, all I can say about Our Share of Night is that it was my favorite book I read last year. It cast a spell on me that I haven’t been able to break ever since. Occasionally, I’ll find myself eyeing my copy on the bookshelf, tempted to pick it up and re-read a passage or two; but the anguish and distress it caused me are still so fresh in my mind that I can’t bring myself to do it. Turning the last page, I felt just like Gaspar, haunted by horrors too ancestral to be fully grasped by the human mind; only in my case, it was the monsters conjured by Mariana Enríquez’s imagination that I found impossible to shake off.
I love toxic gays, I love bad representation. I think queer characters who are obsessive, pathetic, and a little insane are incredibly fun and likeablI love toxic gays, I love bad representation. I think queer characters who are obsessive, pathetic, and a little insane are incredibly fun and likeable. I believe it's fine to swap the gender and sexuality of historical figures when writing fiction, but only if doing so results in them becoming even more unhinged and terrible than they originally were....more
"We were children, playing with the reflections of stars in a pool of water, thinking it was space."
I'm fine. This is fine. I am okay with the events "We were children, playing with the reflections of stars in a pool of water, thinking it was space."
I'm fine. This is fine. I am okay with the events that occurred in this book. These fictional people do not influence my psycho-emotional balance. I did not sob on an airplane while reading this. The epilogue did not completely floor me. I will now resume my normal life and not at all freak out about what I just read.
But also: fucking friendship bracelets? With her? Really??...more
Mi chiedo come, in tredici anni di scuola, nessun insegnante o manuale abbia pensato di farmi conoscere Elsa Morante. Al pari di molte intellettuali iMi chiedo come, in tredici anni di scuola, nessun insegnante o manuale abbia pensato di farmi conoscere Elsa Morante. Al pari di molte intellettuali italiane, questa autrice geniale (la prima donna a vincere il Premio Strega!) ha subìto un processo di marginalizzazione che ha relegato alcune delle sue migliori opere a distratte menzioni nei saggi di critica letteraria.
La scarsa attenzione dedicatale dall’establishment culturale, però, non ha potuto impedire che i suoi romanzi diventassero fonte d’ispirazione per una nuova generazione di scrittrici: da Elena Ferrante a Donatella Di Pietrantonio, molte autrici contemporanee hanno infatti raggiunto fama internazionale rielaborandone i temi e la poetica. Per queste nuove esponenti della narrativa italiana, Menzogna e sortilegio sembra essere un’opera fondamentale; e una volta letto il libro in questione, è facile capire perché.
In settecento pagine di narrazione densa e febbrile, Morante racconta le amare vicissitudini di una famiglia siciliana afflitta dal morbo incurabile della menzogna, qui identificata con la tendenza a vivere di immaginazione e di sogni incompatibili con la realtà. Fin dal prologo, l’approccio dell’autrice appare destabilizzante: come può una donna che vive di scrittura equiparare la capacità di immaginare con la menzogna? Come può sostenere che inventare storie porti inesorabilmente all’infelicità?
Ma gli aspetti parossistici non si fermano qui: l’io narrante, non a caso chiamata Elisa, è lei stessa una scrittrice visitata dai fantasmi dei suoi avi. Nella clausura della sua stanza, la giovane porta infine a compimento il desiderio che ha portato alla rovina i suoi predecessori: rinunciare al mondo reale, abbandonarsi al sogno di un passato glorioso che, grazie alla sua natura inconsistente, può essere rielaborato a piacimento senza alcuna pretesa di veridicità.
Così, con un linguaggio lirico e viscerale, l’autrice-narratrice ci accompagna nella rievocazione delle vicende della sua famiglia; una famiglia condannata, non solo da una società bigotta e meschina, ma anche e soprattutto da uno spirito incapace di rassegnarsi alla banalità del reale....more
Let’s start with the reasons you should read this book, shall we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.
This has got to be one of thLet’s start with the reasons you should read this book, shall we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.
This has got to be one of the smartest pieces of fiction I’ve ever read. It’s such an aggressive flex on the reader, a constant reminder that N.K. Jemisin is, in fact, smarter than you, that I turned the last page feeling completely incapable of articulating any complex thought on what I’d just read. Not a single detail is left to chance, every element of the narrative is perfectly polished and assembled like you would a sophisticated engine.
The writing is flawless: poetic without falling into purple prose territory, vivid and evocative while also maintaining an ironic tone that makes it all the more intriguing. Jemisin lets you know right from the start that you’re being tricked, and makes no secret of the fact that the mysterious second-person narrator is manipulating you. As a self-proclaimed lover of non-linear plots and unreliable narrators (in the hands of a skilled author, these devices never fail to make a story more interesting to me), I was in awe of The Fifth Season’s ability to create an intricate narrative while simultaneously keeping it clear and easy to follow.
Nevertheless, I think Jemisin’s greatest accomplishment as an author is her ability to write a novel that serves as an allegory for systemic discrimination without ever making her intentions obvious to the reader. Despite knowing the series' theme going in, I didn’t realize how the narrative was going to tackle it until the plot started unraveling towards the end. The way this book examines prejudice, imperialism, and cultural narratives that justify systemic oppression is sharp as a knife and more relevant than ever. It’s not easy to successfully use magic as a metaphor for real-world marginalization, but the author does an excellent job building a credible context without being too didactic and on-the-nose. In a world where writers seem increasingly incapable of employing subtext, Jemisin stands out for refusing to talk down to her audience and choosing instead to create a nuanced, complex universe where each character is given realistic motivations and presented in the fullness of their humanity.
I completely understand why this is regarded as a science fiction masterpiece and can’t wait to read the other installments in the trilogy....more
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