Kind of a disappointing ending to a cool series. After their defeat at Mount Olympus, Cassandra, Andie, Henry, Hermes, Odysseus, and Athena are in separate groups, nobody knows where the others are, and everyone is desperate to escape the marauding Fates. Cassandra is determined to kill every one of the gods, including Thanatos, god of death, who agrees to help her find and bring down her enemies. Athena and Odysseus have adventures in the underworld, while Hermes tries to keep Henry and Andie alive.
It all comes together with a lot of promise: Cassandra is 90% of the way to becoming death personified, Thanatos is smitten with her; Henry considers becoming Hector in order to defeat Achilles; and Athena finally accepts that she is in love with Odysseus but can no longer lead mortals.
This could have been a series that ended with the gravitas and high stakes of the Divergent series (although a lot of people were torn about that one); however, the ending fell apart a bit. I felt like Blake not only wrote in a happy ending where there didn't necessarily need to be one, she lost track of the plot. What are the repercussions of doing what Athena does at the end? And what happened to Achilles? I honestly don't remember, which is not a good sign for the end of the book. A lot of promise but not a lot of payoff.
There is a moment in Adichie's novel when one of the characters, Shan, is speaking to a mixed race group of liberal-minded friends about her memoir, but she is really speaking to the reader. Asking why her editor questions her own life experience, wanting to make it more palatable to the "mainstream" (white) readership, Shan confronts the reader of
Americanah. It doesn't matter if you are white, African, African American, or other; no one is outside the scope of race and racism, and all of us have a prejudicial point of view that informs our reading of the text. It is a scene that made me very aware of myself as a white reader.
Americanah is fascinating in the way it confronts race in America, London, and Nigeria, but it is also a love story. Ifemelu and Obinze travel across the world, but they are never far from each other's minds and hearts. There is a simplicity to Obinze that appeals to Ifemelu, and Ifemelu's passion is a magnet to Obinze. As they discover what it means to be Nigerian in first world countries as well as a changing Nigeria, it is their love for each other that guides their growthh.
A really important and powerful book, but I say that as a white woman and what does that mean? I am left questioning the way I read, the reasons I read, and how well I read, after reading this book. That's what makes it so powerful.
Incendiary is written entirely in the voice of a working-class London woman, a feat in itself since Chris Cleave is neither of those things. The unnamed narrator is writing a letter to Osama bin Laden, whose terrorist cell in London blows up a football stadium, killing 1,003 people including her husband and son. The woman herself is badly injured in the aftermath of the blast, when she makes her way to the destroyed stadium and gets trampled.
The text is alternately tragic, funny, and inspiring. The woman is clearly a PTSD survivor, with constant images of the people in front of her in everyday life burning, blowing to pieces, and bleeding. She has visions of her four year old boy, who follows her everywhere. As a coping mechanism she joins the Met, where her husband was a bomb-disposal expert (a painful irony), in order to do her bit fighting the terrorists. She also has a destructive relationship with Jasper Black, a rich journalist who lives in her neighborhood and is deeply attracted to her because she looks just like his girlfriend, Petra, only with the opposite personality. Ultimately it is the web of unhealthy relationships between the narrator, Jasper, Petra, and Terence Butcher, the head of anti-terrorism, that brings the narrator low at the end of the novel, when we find out her letter to Osama is part of her break from reality.
Incendiary, like
Little Bee, was written in response to a specific problem (in this case 9/11) that is still painfully applicable. Cleave writes about a fictional terrorist attack, but the way he describes the aftermath in both societal and personal terms is eerily prescient.
This series is still one of my favorites, but this was not my favorite installment. The beginning was strong, with Ash basically standing in for the new reader: she doesn't know what she is, doesn't know what she can do, and doesn't know anything about the universe of powerful beings around her. Nicholas is a dick, but he's supposed to be, and he's very believable. He goes through the "lying or not lying, endless twisty plots" thinking that is the hallmark of this series.
Ash being a half-demon, and her relationship with Lilith (former half-demon) makes for a nice coda to the series before the big finish. Coming full circle in a way, with a half-demon interacting with Lucifer and playing a major role in the overall plot.
My problem with the book was the happy-crappy towards the end. This is a romance novel; I'm not spoiling it to say that Nicholas and Ash fall in love. It got a little sappier than some of Brook's other novels, and that took me out of the experience of the book. I enjoyed the Guardian/demon/Michael/Taylor plot of the last third more than the Nicholas and Ash plot. Am I disappointed? No. But this is no
Demon Forged (Irena is the shit).
Loved this for: its imagery, gritty lyricism, moments of sheer terror, the dream/future child, and the abrupt ending.
Did not like: didn't Chance already go through a whole book of supernatural occurences? Why is she all up in Deacon's shit about him being psychic? Also, if everyone could stop dilly-dallying for five seconds something might actually get done in this book. This isn't a complaint about lack of plot, just lack of "shut the fuck up and do it already." Narcissa can't be stopped! She is unstoppable! But if we leave in the next five minutes we might stop her! But I can't stop being emo long enough to do that! This book seriously needed a character with a Type A personality.
As always, this Gretchen Lowell novel was a quick and exciting read. I tore through it. However, looking back on it reveals a thin plot and not much forward movement in Archie and Gretchen's relationship. Or Archie and Susan's.
On the loose after the end of the last book, Gretchen is being hunted by the FBI, but she doesn't have much to do with this book until the latter half. Jack Iforgethislastname, the drugrunner, is beginning to suspect that his son Leo is working with the DEA. He throws a masquerade on his private island, "inviting" Susan as a way to blackmail Leo into proving himself loyal. When he learns Susan is in danger, Archie crashes the party to save her and figure out what is going on with Leo. The next morning, Archie wakes up on the riverbank having lost several hours of memory and with no idea who to trust. The rest of the novel explores what happened that night and what surprises Gretchen has up her sleeve for Archie's birthday.
There were a lot of loose ends that I hope Cain plans to tie up in another novel. What exactly is Star's role in this? She is carrying a bag at the party that makes an appearance at the end of the book, but Archie doesn't seem to notice. Is the series moving more towards the drugrunning bust, and if so, is Gretchen just going to flit in and out, "helping" Archie and slaughtering people left and right? Archie seemed to break free of her in past books, but he seems under her spell again here. The title indicates that he wants Gretchen to let him go, but he doesn't act that way. However, I still enjoyed it and I loved Susan, as always.
Every time I think about this book I feel a rush of emotion. It is one of those books I want to recommend to everyone I meet. McCarthy is maddeningly vague about the events leading up to the main action, and yet I felt a deep relevance to the times we live in. It takes on almost every major theme of literature without being smarmy or cliched. In addition to being brilliant contemporary literature, it just makes me want to compare notes with other readers -- I could talk about this book forever but I'll stop now.
Mostly space opera, with a little noir/PI thrown in. The Holden chapters are the space opera, and Miller is the noir. I enjoyed the worldbuilding - humanity has colonized the moon, Mars, and a group of asteroids so far from Earth the sun is just another star. There is tension between the "inners" (people from the inner planets) and the "Belters" (those who grow up in the asteroid belt, who are tall and thin due to low gravity). The stakes are big and the space battles exciting, but the story is really a shell game: who wants you to look in this direction, and what are they doing while you're looking away?
The female characters are not treated as well as, say, those in Ann Aguirre's Sirantha Jax series. There are two female leads, and both basically serve as catalysts for the male leads' growth. That's annoying, but not enough so I won't read the rest of the series. The ending is a game-changer and I'm excited to see what the authors do next.
i like that will was phased out of this book in some ways
lou is moving away from him in time, and although he is there in important ways, she lives her own life now by her own compass
as always, lou is a fish out of water - freshly moved to new york city, working as an assistant to a woman who doesn't even have a job. she's a professional housewife, maintaining her looks and running around the charity circuit for her wall street rich husband
i can never decide what kind of person lou is
she's kind, and funny, and resourceful, and she always lets people run her over
i can't believe how loyal she is to someone who betrays her so viciously
is lou the better person? undoubtedly
but none of those rich assholes learn anything from her
which is realistic i guest
this only gets two stars but i still read it
a great window into what it's like (or was like) to live in the alaskan wilderness, basically cut off from modern civilization
no running water, no central heating, but plenty of booze in case you are an alcoholic who needs to get lubed up before beating his wife half to death
that's the other half of this book, the one that's not about why anyone would choose to live in this insane landscape
hannah crafts classic victims of ptsd out of leni and cora, the daughter and wife of [insert name here because i already forgot]
the reader watches leni be formed into a ptsd survivor from a young age, watching her mother get beaten and broken, wondering if that's really what love is when cora says again and again that her husband is sick, he doesn't mean it, and the way to get him better is to love him
but somehow leni resists this conditioning?
and kind of grows up to be normal, other than wanting to live in alaska again after being in seattle for a while, where they have toilets that flush and very rarely is anyone eaten by wolves