books i read in jul-dec 2024
Dec. 29th, 2024 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhodochrositewow it has been a while... here's one last bookpost before the end of the year. spoilers for priory of the orange tree - samantha shannon, immortal longings - chloe gong, the radiant emperor duology - shelley parker-chan, murtagh - christopher paolini, fire & blood - george r r martin, eragon & eldest - christopher paolini.
currently reading: brisingr – christopher paolini, sword catcher – cassandra clare, a game of thrones – george r r martin
currently reading: brisingr – christopher paolini, sword catcher – cassandra clare, a game of thrones – george r r martin
to read: exordia – seth dickinson, inheritance – christopher paolini, a song to drown rivers - ann liang, queen of nothing – holly black, long live evil - sarah rees brennan
priory of the orange tree – samantha shannon
my primary feeling about this book is that it is a book that is a book but I do mean this positively. I don't feel like my time was wasted, I generally enjoyed myself but I probably wouldn't reread and I didn't feel that strongly about any of the characters. I think this book's greatest strength is the worldbuilding which was a lot of fun and very classically fantasy. like more than anything this is a pretty standard fantasy book and it's a good example of that. ead and tane were my favourite povs, I was neutral on loth since he was really more of a vehicle for me to see more interesting characters and settings. nikolay did actively annoy me… like in the end… what did he accomplish? i felt most compelled by the southern rulers particularly kaguro onjenyu, and also the donmata marosa, although their presence in the story was minimal. also really enjoyed the ancestor lore with the firstbloods and the bad ending siscon fallout between neporo and kalyba and everything about the weight of legacy resonating generations down the line.
I know that galian/virtudom were intended to be Bad and Hate-Inducing but it was actually painful for me to read lmao I got heated. was doing Just thought about the oppression of women in the workplace 😔 the entire time. also I think the virtue believers let go of their religious fanaticism a bit too quickly and easily to be believable like come on no way they're all willing to near instantly open their hearts after thousands of years of indoctrination, but by the time this part of the book kicked in I was already mostly checked out and I don’t have much desire to engage with the point any further. also to my pleasant surprise the infidelity landmines I thought were coming for sure when sabran got married were averted (RIP aubrecht you seemed like a nice dude) but I did have to experience pregnancy landmines in equivalent exchange.
anyway for once i legitimately don't really have anything else to say. in the end it was a book that I read and that is OK. 6/10 it was fine.
favourite line: “You look . . . so much like her.” The witch softened her voice. “A ghost of her.”
immortal longings – chloe gong
in this book cgong boldly asks the question What if the hunger games were really boring? i don't understand how cgong is actively getting worse at writing as she goes, I thought things were somewhat looking up with fhh but immortal longings is somehow worse than the og romijuli duology. maybe a little better on a craft level like approx. fhh level but SO much more boring. what if the hunger games had bodysnatching? is a premise that is very much up my alley as guy who likes death games and bodyswapping but in true cgong fashion she bombed the execution so bad I even have major problems with the worldbuilding. i don't understand the point of the hunger games or how it fits in the sociopolitical structure of the setting. like I get that it's obviously the motivation of potentially accessing a life-changing monetary prize that makes the citizens complacent with competitors being allowed to just freely roam and kill and bodysnatch throughout the city and I also get that the king is supposed to be really shit at ruling but how is the economy functional? how is the kingdom actually even holding together on an administrative level? the superpowers make it easier to quell dissent, sure, but that doesn't replace bureaucracy and I guess I just don't understand how the system of governance is working because the policy choices we see seem so bizarre. like they're really just there so that plot points can happen rather than having any kind of collective logic.
I assume the sequels will address the problem of what the political endgame is going to be since there's always been some narrative resistance to simply getting rid of the old king and replacing him with august but I mean. are calla and anton going to implement democracy or something?? are the twentysomethings drawing up a constitution to move society out of absolute monarchy??? I don’t mean to get so caught up in the political worldbuilding but when your premise is so overtly about politics it does force my hand.. I also assume that the sequels will grapple with the ethics of commandeering other people's bodies and the extremely obvious metaphor of the wealthy elites using and discarding the literal bodies of the working class for their entertainment and convenience because literally nobody turned their mind to this in the first book which kind of stunned me given that cgong usually tries to be conscious of social issues to the detriment of setting immersion even.
I also thought the twist that calla was a peasant nobody who had permanently stolen the original princess calla's body and basically killed her from the inside in a desperate bid for survival was interesting although it made her act of double parricide and her radicalisation a lot less shocking if she never considered them her "real" parents in the first place and she was always a ""double agent"" from the start. I would like to see her grapple more with the ethics of becoming the "real" calla especially when she was only able to take over OG calla because OG calla was extending a moment of kindness to her, not just her immediate fear of losing control of the body she stole. I'd actually been vaguely conjecturing that calla's big secret was that she had forced a permanent bodyswap with otta which was why the looming threat of otta waking up was so serious, plus it would have been fun TO ME for anton to fall in love with the same girl in a different body because I'm a first love truther but I understand that would have been a different story.
anton and calla's antagonistic rivals who become reluctant allies due to shared goal/shared enemies dynamic should have been really good too but it's cgong so of course it was boring. the most interesting I found them was when they were fighting to the death and calla decided that because she loved him she would kill him to spare him from having to kill her, which was a fun take on the usual trope and rang very true to calla's character. however, the way that cgong chose to convey this was to have calla directly say I Love You So I Will Kill You So You Won't Have To Kill Me like please could we not come up with anything less like dropping an anvil on our heads. the other part of the story I liked was the vague hints at galipei and august having some kind of forbidden bodyguard x prince romance, which did make me curious especially since august has been bodysnatched by anton and is possibly permadead? thought the very careful writing around the moments when galipei and august are in private and allow themselves to briefly indulge in casual physical intimacy was pretty compelling. I mean there's no way august ended like this especially considering this is historicalish chinese fantasy au antony & cleopatra fic so I assume he's going to be the main antag next book and team up with otta to maximise their joint octavian caesar slay. anyway 2/10.
favourite line: n/a
she who became the sun – shelley parker-chan
girl steals her brother's identity in order to take his glorious fate as foretold for herself is such a niche two nickels moments and yet here we are. basara will always be the og to me though. this is an objectively stunning book, beautifully written, insanely iddy (though not for me) in a way that is so technically well-executed, but my god the landmines. I knew going in that I was shopping for landmines at the landmine store but I've just really been in the mood for fantasy lately so it's umm it's the price to pay I guess.
this is a particularly tragic case of id mismatch because the parts that do hit for me are SO good - ambitious ruthless protag who not only kills but also murders innocents in her quest for power, enemy soulmate (soulnemesis?) newtype bond forged by fate and narrative parallels that is not romantic at all except for the way that textual connection is inherently the most romantic thing in the universe, maiden who approaches the end understanding the exact nature of the cost her love will exact upon her heart and her moral compass yet still believing, vengeance quests everywhere, newtype flashes everywhere, FATE and DOOM everywhere <3 I really liked zhu's desire is the root of all suffering ➡️ if you're going to suffer anyway you might as well desire as ravenously as possible philosophy and its inverse in ouyang's hatred and denial and inability to accept his own desires having once been someone permitted by the world to have desires before losing that status, which is also contrasted against ma's resignation to only ever being an object of desire without any subjectivity or agency in having her own, except that upon intersection with zhu's narrative force of pure strength of desire ouyang doubles down and resents zhu for forcing him to begin putting his fate into action even as he embraces it whereas ma's initial fear transforms into an even stronger idealism that it is possible for her to want more. the parallels the foils the love the hate…
premise-wise this is kind of what tpw and iron widow think they were doing ie iconoclast heroine with Gender and ambition in equal parts whose meteoric rise to power is a targaryen-style coin flip. zhu outsells because I actually believe in her self-conviction and her hunger. I don't think the villain protags in tpw and iron widow work as well because I can see behind the curtain to the author trying so hard to make them cool and morally grey girlboss so they end up ringing kind of hollow, but zhu's charisma works both in and out of universe I think. also parker-chan can WRITE, unlike… etc.
the longer I've sat with swbts the more I feel compelled by it... now i still don't think I like it but it really did make me think and I wish to defend it online against negative reviews so in the end I think that probably amounts to me liking it despite my ambivalence about large swathes of the story premise and tropes.
anyway recommend if the tropes are up your alley and I think if you enjoyed baru cormorant you might enjoy this too. i am very excited about the prospect of the zhu and ouyang book2 teamup which is advertised on the blurb, lfg mobile sun emperor zeta. I really don't know how to rate this one overall, maybe like 5/10, 6/10?
favourite lines:
Just knowing that it was transient—that any moment would be drained of its sweetness and vividness once it became memory—made it bittersweet to him even as it was happening.
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Inside her there was only the perfect, blank brightness of belief and desire. Desire is the cause of all suffering. The greater the desire, the greater the suffering, and now she desired greatness itself. With all her will, she directed the thought to Heaven and the watching statues: Whatever suffering it takes, I can bear it.
-
All of it had been nothing more than the mechanistic motion of the stars as they brought him this opportunity: the path to his fate.
he who drowned the world - shelley parker-chan
I liked this a lot more than swbts but I still don't think I'd say that I actually liked it. I found it compelling and I felt deeply sad, and everything I liked about swbts I liked just as much if not more in this book because the looming doom that swbts repeatedly flagged finally arrives and everyone is on like 150% derangement and delusion levels which is fun to read in a gas leak collective hysteria way. there's just so much tragedy that arises out of an inability to see past the confines of a particular worldview ingrained by society – whether that's ouyang's ultimately futile solo vengeance quest after he discovers that zhu isn't a man or the queen of salt never allowing herself the chance to obtain the mandate of heaven in her own right because she never thought a woman capable of it – and I do love tragedy, and trainwrecks with fifty different moving parts which are all crashing and exploding in slow motion. there were also more jokes amidst the terror which I also love to see; zhu and ouyang's hostageshipping get-along shirt platonic asexual bdsm buddy cop era made me smile which was an emotion I really did need during the otherwise deeply harrowing experience of reading this book.
I knew from book1 that ouyang was not going to survive the series but every chapter from his pov this book was so especially unhinged I was frowning and wincing nonstop. I think ouyang had a lot of character elements that I'm usually really drawn to but he just never quite clicked for me. I loooove neurotic highranker guys who are full of rage and grief and who view themselves as tools animated by purpose, though not in this case… not to look like I can excuse murder but I draw the line at period typical misogyny which is intensified by ouyang's extremely complicated and dysphoric relationship with his body and gender presentation but maybe that was my problem. not a complaint I have about his character just a personal thing for me. in the end he just made me incredibly sad. baoxiang was absolutely the most deranged unhinged gas leak experiencer so his pov chapters were always a bit of "fun"…. giving abyssal black flame dragon style chuuni kinda but in a really depressing and awful way. I would have liked more ma pov but it was "enjoyable" to see her also swept up and actively participating in the looney tunes mass hysteria bad decisionmaking.
hwdtw also kept running headfirst into various really specific landmines of mine like graphically described drowning and medical experimentation and permanently ruined reputations which did cause me to make many gagged_doraemon.png expressions. I do really love spc's prose though and when they write about my favourite things ie doom and power dynamics and bearing the curse and narrative parallels and being the same person and persevering through unimaginable agony while approaching the end and ambiguous intense feelings it just blows me away every time. in the end… it was pretty good… didn't say I liked it though. again don't know how to rate this… 6/10…?
favourite lines:
Even obliterated by pain, he knew there was only one way out. He would endure, though he didn’t know how he could, simply because he had to.
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Every line of his body radiated agony. But instead of cowering from the sensation, as ordinary people did, he seemed to be pressing himself into it: there was no space at all between him and his suffering.
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The gleam of checked murder in his eye sent a thrill through her. He could kill her, but now that he had thrown his lot in with hers at least for as long as they were on this island together: he wouldn’t. He was her weapon to wield.
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What feeling could possibly be so terrible, or so big? It had to be anger. // What was that hot feeling? Hate, she thought. She hated him. She hated him for his concern, and she hated his face with its pity, and sorrow, and understanding, that had nothing to do with the truth of her at all.
Murtagh – Christopher paolini
i was trying to speedrun inhericycle canon review for yuletide treating purposes and this kind of did not assist in that regard at all but I enjoyed Murtagh sooooo much more than I enjoyed the og books, I'm sure I'm heavily biased towards Murtagh and against eragon as narrators but I also do think cpaolini has improved so much as a writer that I feel weirdly fond about his later output. Murtagh is a pretty satisfyingly tropey iron woobie story of stoically persisting through immense suffering and grim lonely misery to ultimately learn the important lesson of relying on other people. allowing yourself to be rescued is genuinely one of the most heart touching themes ever to me!!
literally everything that could go wrong in murtagh's life has gone wrong and continues to go wrong. every memory of his time at galbatorix's court is so awful and sad. every plot point he struggles through in this book is also so awful and sad. but he keeps going and so does thorn. I like that they repeatedly consider leaving everything behind and just living purely for themselves but murtagh feels that he has to atone for what he's done (and to nasuada specifically too) by carrying out the duties of a dragonrider. it matters that it's a conscious choice for murtagh to take the harder path and do the right thing, even if his motives aren't necessarily purely selfless.
I instantly found murtagh's relationship with thorn much more compelling than eragon and saphira's bond – the deep and inseparable love but also the trauma-induced alienation from their own selves that resonates down the line and creates a kind of distance between thorn and murtagh despite the ferocity of their love for each other. it reminded me a little bit of how witches and their daemons are together but separate in hdm. thorn having claustrophobia because of ptsd and trying so hard to exposure therapy himself into pushing past it for murtagh's sake had me TT'ing. also gagged_doraemon at their nightly ritual of speaking their true names to each other so that they are constantly confronting the unvarnished core of their identities in every terrible facet, refusing to look away in this deeply masochistic shared exercise in accountability, extending the love and acceptance and complete understanding to each other that they can't quite extend to themselves. Murtagh revealing that "oathbreaker" is part of his true name actually had me frozen like that's soooooo tragic. ruthlessly true, technically, but an incredibly unforgiving stance to take on himself! we know the ancient language isn't a universal truth but rather a personal one: if it's true for you, the ancient language considers it to be truth. so I think it says more about how Murtagh views himself than who he actually is as a person. he's never wanted to break an oath, he is just always in situations that force him to do so. kind of my poor meow meow who did many things wrong but mostly because he only had bad and worse options to pick from.
I don't think I found bachel a very compelling villain, I was envisioning haman a little bit during her scenes but bachel lacked the sauce. maybe we didn't get to spend enough time with her, I do appreciate the attempt at slow buildup of Her Web Connects Them All type threat by having her offscreen for most of the story so we only see her shadow looming over the plot but I think the payoff wasn't worth it… i mean I didn't find galbatorix compelling either but I don't think he was supposed to be much more than generic personification of evil fantasy villain whereas bachel kind of wasn't anything at all, I really couldn't tell how serious of a threat we were supposed to consider her. due to this I have been going back and forth over whether I liked the brainwash/torture scenes, I would have enjoyed them a lot more if I cared about bachel. I did really like his repeated Bearer Of The Curse flashbacks to being on the other side of the torturing with nasuada though and I can't wait for my beautiful queen x knight traumabond starcrossed romance to take centre stage in the next book now that murtagh is back at court. 7/10 I had a nice time overall even though murtagh did not.
favourite line: But it still would not save either of them from their fated end, for the doom of all things was to die and be forgotten. Even dragons.
REREADS
fire & blood – george r r martin
sorry to report that I'm back in my asoiaf era… i went to reread the dance chapters after accidentally becoming a rhaenyrahead through secondhand hotd exposure and they did make me hold my breath and try to die and I will probably never read them again. I understand that f&b is a heavily biased secondary source written from a greens-favouring and largely anti-targaryen perspective and I knowwwww that rhaenyra's death could not possibly be more heavily framed as A Terrible And Unjust Thing in re amethyst empress parallels and the fact that her murder literally causes the extinction of dragons and magic from westeros and sets the course of events irrevocably towards the long night but I'm still going to be mad about it. I genuinely feel so disproportionately upset about rhaenyra's usurpation and eventual fate and no amount of metanarrative framing can make me feel better about it. anyway i'll probably make a separate post once I finish my agot reread at the very least but I am unfortunately a targaryen stannie 4 life. obviously i'm #TEAMBLACK forever and ever but I have eyes, I'm equal opportunity narrative enjoyer and the greens have crazy narrative what can I say I love dysfunctional families ):
I also have many opinions about rhaenicent but I don't particularly feel like explaining my stances which are neither book canon nor show canon but instead a third secret thing: I was there in westeros during the dance lurking in every corner and reading everyone's minds and can confirm that this is the true and objective history of exactly what happened. instead I'll repost twt conversation with nico:
on a completely different note VISENYA THE CONQUEROR I LOVE YOUUUU. let me state for the record that I fully believe if anyone was the third wheel in the conquerot3 it was aegon. visenya and rhaenys cared deeply for each other. why else would visenya have tried to burn down dorne with vhagar so many times in retribution for rhaenys's death? but I believe they All felt intensely about each other even if aegon and visenya did not necessarily like each other all the time (something something similar poles of a magnet) and both probably preferred rhaenys' company (another way in which they were The Same Person), which is naturally why I find myself most compelled by the aegonvisenya arm of the trio. ofc also because of rhaenys widows club. I do not believe that visenya poisoned aenys; i think visenya was a pragmatic and calculating woman who prioritised the longevity of her family legacy so it isn't even something I would put past her and certainly she thought maegor would be the better ruler, but aenys was the son of her beloved sisterwife and even by the maesters' haterism-biased account aenys got better in her care. I don't think visenya wanted aenys dead. I think visenya was as capable of sentiment and love as she was of violence.
my targaryen 5pick in no particular order: daenerys stormborn <3 / rhaenyra i / rhaena (dreamfyre's rider) (my favourite messy lesbian whose toxic breakup small domino will eventually lead to the salvation of the world and the end of the long night big domino) / visenya the conqueror / rhaenys (meleys' rider) (i'm ideologically opposed to referring to her as the queen who never was because it makes me very sad. the queen who SHOULD HAVE BEEN)
also my fave valyrian names: aerea (#1 most beautiful valyrian name) (AND MY POOR MEOW MEOW SO MUCH) / daenerys / rhaenyra / daenaera / jacaerys / lucerys / daenys / daeron / viserra / aelor / aelora / viserys / naerys
favourite line: By the end of the year she had taken to talking to herself, and had come to have a deep aversion to the colour green.
eragon / eldest – christopher paolini
chronologically this should go before the Murtagh entry lmao it just goes to show how long it's taken me to write this up. anyway about… a year ago at this point… I watched lotr for the first time with exoomcs and it ignited a deep desire to reread discount lotr (ie eragon) in me so I've been listening to the audiobooks while running. the narrator doing character voices (the irish accent just for murtagh cracks me uppp) for everyone adds a little extra note of comedy that eragon sorely needs because it takes itself much too seriously for what it is, which is a mediocre shounen power fantasy about the most special boy in the universe that follows every cliché genre convention to a tee. still I think that's kind of charming, in the same way that fourth wing is kind of charming, except at least fourth wing is self-aware and doesn't really pretend to be more than what it is, which is a poorly written romantasy about the most special girl in the universe. eragon has delusions of grandeur beyond its station and you can really tell cpaolini is under the impression he's writing epic literature with incredible prose. but it's been a fun and nostalgic experience for me overall—eragon was one of my earliest experiences with high fantasy (after deltora quest) and i credit it with kickstarting a lot of my love for the genre. unfortunately, much like my formative experience with supernatural romance was twilight, i do not have a more illustrious sffliker9000 origin story.
eragon was not really enjoyable but at least eldest was way more fun for me, i love a training montage even though eragon's magical levelup / disability cure made me roll my eyes. I will also say that the narrative trying to grapple with the Ontologically Evil Race trope by giving interiority and character dimension to the urgals was refreshing to see, although the exact same thing then happening to the ra'zac instead of the orc analogue was kind of weibolaughcry. i was pleased to see that nasuada still as onepickful as she was for me when I was 10, i enjoyed the scene where eragon swore personal fealty to her instead of the varden and the scene where she disrupted surda's economy and solved the varden's funding problems with cheap magically-woven lace. my genius and comedic queen. murtagh also still as twopickful as ever, i love cool guys who suffer and labour under the weight of a terrible legacy and I cannot wait for the murtagh/nasuada Children Of Their Fathers(tm) co-hostage doomed romance to kick in <3 cpaolini fumbled the bag with eragon/arya except for the part where he permanently separated them but murtagh/nasuada was truly a brilliant stroke of tinhet genius.
speaking of our protag eragon… he is so annoying to me... in particular i find the way he acts towards murtagh so egregious when murtagh has repeatedly put himself in harm's way to save or protect eragon and made it so clear that he has never had a choice in anything that happens to him or that he has been forced to do and whenever he does have a choice he chooses eragon. and all eragon does is repeat exactly the same pattern of prejudices that everyone else inflicts on Murtagh once they find out who he really is. you would think that eragon would have a little more sympathy once he finds out he's bearing the sins of the same father (or so he thinks) but nope. murtagh he doesn't deserve you!!! the romantic subplot with arya is also so embarrassing like oh my god you don't know her, she's repeatedly rebuffed your advances and told you that she only wants to be your comrade and friend. and you are making this soooo awkward!!! I genuinely find the lady x knight dynamic between eragon and nasuada so much more compelling, it is so overtly unromantic it loops back around to extremely heart touching and romantic, although it's not something that I would say I actively ship, except that I do, but I don't. it's quite simple actually. 4/10 for eragon, 6/10 for eldest. looking forward to my favourite chapter in all of inhericycle coming up in brisingr ie wikihow to forge a ye olde mediaeval sword.
favourite line: "Shall we dance? Friend of my heart?"
priory of the orange tree – samantha shannon
my primary feeling about this book is that it is a book that is a book but I do mean this positively. I don't feel like my time was wasted, I generally enjoyed myself but I probably wouldn't reread and I didn't feel that strongly about any of the characters. I think this book's greatest strength is the worldbuilding which was a lot of fun and very classically fantasy. like more than anything this is a pretty standard fantasy book and it's a good example of that. ead and tane were my favourite povs, I was neutral on loth since he was really more of a vehicle for me to see more interesting characters and settings. nikolay did actively annoy me… like in the end… what did he accomplish? i felt most compelled by the southern rulers particularly kaguro onjenyu, and also the donmata marosa, although their presence in the story was minimal. also really enjoyed the ancestor lore with the firstbloods and the bad ending siscon fallout between neporo and kalyba and everything about the weight of legacy resonating generations down the line.
I know that galian/virtudom were intended to be Bad and Hate-Inducing but it was actually painful for me to read lmao I got heated. was doing Just thought about the oppression of women in the workplace 😔 the entire time. also I think the virtue believers let go of their religious fanaticism a bit too quickly and easily to be believable like come on no way they're all willing to near instantly open their hearts after thousands of years of indoctrination, but by the time this part of the book kicked in I was already mostly checked out and I don’t have much desire to engage with the point any further. also to my pleasant surprise the infidelity landmines I thought were coming for sure when sabran got married were averted (RIP aubrecht you seemed like a nice dude) but I did have to experience pregnancy landmines in equivalent exchange.
anyway for once i legitimately don't really have anything else to say. in the end it was a book that I read and that is OK. 6/10 it was fine.
favourite line: “You look . . . so much like her.” The witch softened her voice. “A ghost of her.”
- why was this instantly the most compelling dynamic in the entire book!!!
immortal longings – chloe gong
in this book cgong boldly asks the question What if the hunger games were really boring? i don't understand how cgong is actively getting worse at writing as she goes, I thought things were somewhat looking up with fhh but immortal longings is somehow worse than the og romijuli duology. maybe a little better on a craft level like approx. fhh level but SO much more boring. what if the hunger games had bodysnatching? is a premise that is very much up my alley as guy who likes death games and bodyswapping but in true cgong fashion she bombed the execution so bad I even have major problems with the worldbuilding. i don't understand the point of the hunger games or how it fits in the sociopolitical structure of the setting. like I get that it's obviously the motivation of potentially accessing a life-changing monetary prize that makes the citizens complacent with competitors being allowed to just freely roam and kill and bodysnatch throughout the city and I also get that the king is supposed to be really shit at ruling but how is the economy functional? how is the kingdom actually even holding together on an administrative level? the superpowers make it easier to quell dissent, sure, but that doesn't replace bureaucracy and I guess I just don't understand how the system of governance is working because the policy choices we see seem so bizarre. like they're really just there so that plot points can happen rather than having any kind of collective logic.
I assume the sequels will address the problem of what the political endgame is going to be since there's always been some narrative resistance to simply getting rid of the old king and replacing him with august but I mean. are calla and anton going to implement democracy or something?? are the twentysomethings drawing up a constitution to move society out of absolute monarchy??? I don’t mean to get so caught up in the political worldbuilding but when your premise is so overtly about politics it does force my hand.. I also assume that the sequels will grapple with the ethics of commandeering other people's bodies and the extremely obvious metaphor of the wealthy elites using and discarding the literal bodies of the working class for their entertainment and convenience because literally nobody turned their mind to this in the first book which kind of stunned me given that cgong usually tries to be conscious of social issues to the detriment of setting immersion even.
I also thought the twist that calla was a peasant nobody who had permanently stolen the original princess calla's body and basically killed her from the inside in a desperate bid for survival was interesting although it made her act of double parricide and her radicalisation a lot less shocking if she never considered them her "real" parents in the first place and she was always a ""double agent"" from the start. I would like to see her grapple more with the ethics of becoming the "real" calla especially when she was only able to take over OG calla because OG calla was extending a moment of kindness to her, not just her immediate fear of losing control of the body she stole. I'd actually been vaguely conjecturing that calla's big secret was that she had forced a permanent bodyswap with otta which was why the looming threat of otta waking up was so serious, plus it would have been fun TO ME for anton to fall in love with the same girl in a different body because I'm a first love truther but I understand that would have been a different story.
anton and calla's antagonistic rivals who become reluctant allies due to shared goal/shared enemies dynamic should have been really good too but it's cgong so of course it was boring. the most interesting I found them was when they were fighting to the death and calla decided that because she loved him she would kill him to spare him from having to kill her, which was a fun take on the usual trope and rang very true to calla's character. however, the way that cgong chose to convey this was to have calla directly say I Love You So I Will Kill You So You Won't Have To Kill Me like please could we not come up with anything less like dropping an anvil on our heads. the other part of the story I liked was the vague hints at galipei and august having some kind of forbidden bodyguard x prince romance, which did make me curious especially since august has been bodysnatched by anton and is possibly permadead? thought the very careful writing around the moments when galipei and august are in private and allow themselves to briefly indulge in casual physical intimacy was pretty compelling. I mean there's no way august ended like this especially considering this is historicalish chinese fantasy au antony & cleopatra fic so I assume he's going to be the main antag next book and team up with otta to maximise their joint octavian caesar slay. anyway 2/10.
favourite line: n/a
she who became the sun – shelley parker-chan
girl steals her brother's identity in order to take his glorious fate as foretold for herself is such a niche two nickels moments and yet here we are. basara will always be the og to me though. this is an objectively stunning book, beautifully written, insanely iddy (though not for me) in a way that is so technically well-executed, but my god the landmines. I knew going in that I was shopping for landmines at the landmine store but I've just really been in the mood for fantasy lately so it's umm it's the price to pay I guess.
this is a particularly tragic case of id mismatch because the parts that do hit for me are SO good - ambitious ruthless protag who not only kills but also murders innocents in her quest for power, enemy soulmate (soulnemesis?) newtype bond forged by fate and narrative parallels that is not romantic at all except for the way that textual connection is inherently the most romantic thing in the universe, maiden who approaches the end understanding the exact nature of the cost her love will exact upon her heart and her moral compass yet still believing, vengeance quests everywhere, newtype flashes everywhere, FATE and DOOM everywhere <3 I really liked zhu's desire is the root of all suffering ➡️ if you're going to suffer anyway you might as well desire as ravenously as possible philosophy and its inverse in ouyang's hatred and denial and inability to accept his own desires having once been someone permitted by the world to have desires before losing that status, which is also contrasted against ma's resignation to only ever being an object of desire without any subjectivity or agency in having her own, except that upon intersection with zhu's narrative force of pure strength of desire ouyang doubles down and resents zhu for forcing him to begin putting his fate into action even as he embraces it whereas ma's initial fear transforms into an even stronger idealism that it is possible for her to want more. the parallels the foils the love the hate…
premise-wise this is kind of what tpw and iron widow think they were doing ie iconoclast heroine with Gender and ambition in equal parts whose meteoric rise to power is a targaryen-style coin flip. zhu outsells because I actually believe in her self-conviction and her hunger. I don't think the villain protags in tpw and iron widow work as well because I can see behind the curtain to the author trying so hard to make them cool and morally grey girlboss so they end up ringing kind of hollow, but zhu's charisma works both in and out of universe I think. also parker-chan can WRITE, unlike… etc.
the longer I've sat with swbts the more I feel compelled by it... now i still don't think I like it but it really did make me think and I wish to defend it online against negative reviews so in the end I think that probably amounts to me liking it despite my ambivalence about large swathes of the story premise and tropes.
anyway recommend if the tropes are up your alley and I think if you enjoyed baru cormorant you might enjoy this too. i am very excited about the prospect of the zhu and ouyang book2 teamup which is advertised on the blurb, lfg mobile sun emperor zeta. I really don't know how to rate this one overall, maybe like 5/10, 6/10?
favourite lines:
Just knowing that it was transient—that any moment would be drained of its sweetness and vividness once it became memory—made it bittersweet to him even as it was happening.
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Inside her there was only the perfect, blank brightness of belief and desire. Desire is the cause of all suffering. The greater the desire, the greater the suffering, and now she desired greatness itself. With all her will, she directed the thought to Heaven and the watching statues: Whatever suffering it takes, I can bear it.
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All of it had been nothing more than the mechanistic motion of the stars as they brought him this opportunity: the path to his fate.
- this memory / desire / doom triple crown
he who drowned the world - shelley parker-chan
I liked this a lot more than swbts but I still don't think I'd say that I actually liked it. I found it compelling and I felt deeply sad, and everything I liked about swbts I liked just as much if not more in this book because the looming doom that swbts repeatedly flagged finally arrives and everyone is on like 150% derangement and delusion levels which is fun to read in a gas leak collective hysteria way. there's just so much tragedy that arises out of an inability to see past the confines of a particular worldview ingrained by society – whether that's ouyang's ultimately futile solo vengeance quest after he discovers that zhu isn't a man or the queen of salt never allowing herself the chance to obtain the mandate of heaven in her own right because she never thought a woman capable of it – and I do love tragedy, and trainwrecks with fifty different moving parts which are all crashing and exploding in slow motion. there were also more jokes amidst the terror which I also love to see; zhu and ouyang's hostageshipping get-along shirt platonic asexual bdsm buddy cop era made me smile which was an emotion I really did need during the otherwise deeply harrowing experience of reading this book.
I knew from book1 that ouyang was not going to survive the series but every chapter from his pov this book was so especially unhinged I was frowning and wincing nonstop. I think ouyang had a lot of character elements that I'm usually really drawn to but he just never quite clicked for me. I loooove neurotic highranker guys who are full of rage and grief and who view themselves as tools animated by purpose, though not in this case… not to look like I can excuse murder but I draw the line at period typical misogyny which is intensified by ouyang's extremely complicated and dysphoric relationship with his body and gender presentation but maybe that was my problem. not a complaint I have about his character just a personal thing for me. in the end he just made me incredibly sad. baoxiang was absolutely the most deranged unhinged gas leak experiencer so his pov chapters were always a bit of "fun"…. giving abyssal black flame dragon style chuuni kinda but in a really depressing and awful way. I would have liked more ma pov but it was "enjoyable" to see her also swept up and actively participating in the looney tunes mass hysteria bad decisionmaking.
hwdtw also kept running headfirst into various really specific landmines of mine like graphically described drowning and medical experimentation and permanently ruined reputations which did cause me to make many gagged_doraemon.png expressions. I do really love spc's prose though and when they write about my favourite things ie doom and power dynamics and bearing the curse and narrative parallels and being the same person and persevering through unimaginable agony while approaching the end and ambiguous intense feelings it just blows me away every time. in the end… it was pretty good… didn't say I liked it though. again don't know how to rate this… 6/10…?
favourite lines:
Even obliterated by pain, he knew there was only one way out. He would endure, though he didn’t know how he could, simply because he had to.
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Every line of his body radiated agony. But instead of cowering from the sensation, as ordinary people did, he seemed to be pressing himself into it: there was no space at all between him and his suffering.
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The gleam of checked murder in his eye sent a thrill through her. He could kill her, but now that he had thrown his lot in with hers at least for as long as they were on this island together: he wouldn’t. He was her weapon to wield.
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What feeling could possibly be so terrible, or so big? It had to be anger. // What was that hot feeling? Hate, she thought. She hated him. She hated him for his concern, and she hated his face with its pity, and sorrow, and understanding, that had nothing to do with the truth of her at all.
- LOL guys you're gonna have to guess again
Murtagh – Christopher paolini
i was trying to speedrun inhericycle canon review for yuletide treating purposes and this kind of did not assist in that regard at all but I enjoyed Murtagh sooooo much more than I enjoyed the og books, I'm sure I'm heavily biased towards Murtagh and against eragon as narrators but I also do think cpaolini has improved so much as a writer that I feel weirdly fond about his later output. Murtagh is a pretty satisfyingly tropey iron woobie story of stoically persisting through immense suffering and grim lonely misery to ultimately learn the important lesson of relying on other people. allowing yourself to be rescued is genuinely one of the most heart touching themes ever to me!!
literally everything that could go wrong in murtagh's life has gone wrong and continues to go wrong. every memory of his time at galbatorix's court is so awful and sad. every plot point he struggles through in this book is also so awful and sad. but he keeps going and so does thorn. I like that they repeatedly consider leaving everything behind and just living purely for themselves but murtagh feels that he has to atone for what he's done (and to nasuada specifically too) by carrying out the duties of a dragonrider. it matters that it's a conscious choice for murtagh to take the harder path and do the right thing, even if his motives aren't necessarily purely selfless.
I instantly found murtagh's relationship with thorn much more compelling than eragon and saphira's bond – the deep and inseparable love but also the trauma-induced alienation from their own selves that resonates down the line and creates a kind of distance between thorn and murtagh despite the ferocity of their love for each other. it reminded me a little bit of how witches and their daemons are together but separate in hdm. thorn having claustrophobia because of ptsd and trying so hard to exposure therapy himself into pushing past it for murtagh's sake had me TT'ing. also gagged_doraemon at their nightly ritual of speaking their true names to each other so that they are constantly confronting the unvarnished core of their identities in every terrible facet, refusing to look away in this deeply masochistic shared exercise in accountability, extending the love and acceptance and complete understanding to each other that they can't quite extend to themselves. Murtagh revealing that "oathbreaker" is part of his true name actually had me frozen like that's soooooo tragic. ruthlessly true, technically, but an incredibly unforgiving stance to take on himself! we know the ancient language isn't a universal truth but rather a personal one: if it's true for you, the ancient language considers it to be truth. so I think it says more about how Murtagh views himself than who he actually is as a person. he's never wanted to break an oath, he is just always in situations that force him to do so. kind of my poor meow meow who did many things wrong but mostly because he only had bad and worse options to pick from.
I don't think I found bachel a very compelling villain, I was envisioning haman a little bit during her scenes but bachel lacked the sauce. maybe we didn't get to spend enough time with her, I do appreciate the attempt at slow buildup of Her Web Connects Them All type threat by having her offscreen for most of the story so we only see her shadow looming over the plot but I think the payoff wasn't worth it… i mean I didn't find galbatorix compelling either but I don't think he was supposed to be much more than generic personification of evil fantasy villain whereas bachel kind of wasn't anything at all, I really couldn't tell how serious of a threat we were supposed to consider her. due to this I have been going back and forth over whether I liked the brainwash/torture scenes, I would have enjoyed them a lot more if I cared about bachel. I did really like his repeated Bearer Of The Curse flashbacks to being on the other side of the torturing with nasuada though and I can't wait for my beautiful queen x knight traumabond starcrossed romance to take centre stage in the next book now that murtagh is back at court. 7/10 I had a nice time overall even though murtagh did not.
favourite line: But it still would not save either of them from their fated end, for the doom of all things was to die and be forgotten. Even dragons.
REREADS
fire & blood – george r r martin
sorry to report that I'm back in my asoiaf era… i went to reread the dance chapters after accidentally becoming a rhaenyrahead through secondhand hotd exposure and they did make me hold my breath and try to die and I will probably never read them again. I understand that f&b is a heavily biased secondary source written from a greens-favouring and largely anti-targaryen perspective and I knowwwww that rhaenyra's death could not possibly be more heavily framed as A Terrible And Unjust Thing in re amethyst empress parallels and the fact that her murder literally causes the extinction of dragons and magic from westeros and sets the course of events irrevocably towards the long night but I'm still going to be mad about it. I genuinely feel so disproportionately upset about rhaenyra's usurpation and eventual fate and no amount of metanarrative framing can make me feel better about it. anyway i'll probably make a separate post once I finish my agot reread at the very least but I am unfortunately a targaryen stannie 4 life. obviously i'm #TEAMBLACK forever and ever but I have eyes, I'm equal opportunity narrative enjoyer and the greens have crazy narrative what can I say I love dysfunctional families ):
I also have many opinions about rhaenicent but I don't particularly feel like explaining my stances which are neither book canon nor show canon but instead a third secret thing: I was there in westeros during the dance lurking in every corner and reading everyone's minds and can confirm that this is the true and objective history of exactly what happened. instead I'll repost twt conversation with nico:
- me: i feel like I'm coming across as a rhaenicent anti when i am literally Ship<3 but like you guys understand that you can make rhaenicent real in the text without pretending their connections to their families don’t exist and in fact rhaenicent real in the text is predicated on the conflicting and all powerful love they have for their kids…
- nico: i think the visual imagery that has come out of the finale is stunning and i dont even disagree that the themes associated w them r compelling theyre just so fundamentally at odds w the rest of the story to the point of undermining its own merits
- me: YOUUUU get it like it is gorgeous and incredibly acted and the I Want To Elope But I Cant thing would work for me for another ship but thats simply not rhaenicent at all they are ALL about family and legacy and like u say doomparallels. and even tho I agree that alicent is wracked with guilt i also think shes sunkcostfallacynator on top of genuinely loving her kids for better or for worse. thats part of her tragedy!!! she cant stand to face what shes done / what has been done to her. but she does because its all she knows
- nico: im not sure how much of this is the book vs hotd writers just flopstyling it but one of my biggest issues w s1 was when viserys died it was made like STUPIDLY clear on all accounts to the viewer that viserys thought he was continuing a convo w rhaenrya abt aegon the conqueror, but its alicent w him on his deathbed who hears him say Aegon and assumes (obviously) he means he wants aegon to succeed him. and so the only reason the dance even starts (at least on alicents part) is not only a completely misunderstanding but also ENTIRELY known to the audience the entire time bc before this alicent is shown to be like rhaenyra i really think u would be a great queen. likeeeee i think it’s a thematic issue of the direction that hotd is going w in general where everything is somehow a misunderstanding/mistake/miscommunication and its supposed to be this tragedy along the lines of All Of This Could've Been Avoided but to me its like… fangless and whishy washy bc the best part of tragedy as a genre is that it CANT be avoided!! alicents actions should be intentional bc that makes the futility of them more compelling!!! like I know shes getting torn to shreds weekly by the misogyny brigade even w this stupid ass misunderstanding thing but I just think its 1000x more compelling if she hates aegon and thinks he is a horrible person who should never be in charge of even himself and genuinely believes (even if she'll never admit it even to herself) in rhaenyra (1/38182931294912) and STILL she makes the choices that she does anyway. Like not to be like Omg u guys want complex women characters but you cant even handle alicent hightower but like actuallyyyyy tho
- me: 100% agree I like the show canon of viserys telling rhaenyra about tpwwp even but I think the intentionality of alicent choosing to crown and back aegon no matter how much she grows to dislike him as a product of the same system that fucked her (and rhaenyra) over that she continues to actively uphold is just soooo much more compelling than whoops misunderstandings central and alicent trying to belatedly backpedal like honestly I just dont think she would do that! alicent sticks with her children until the bitter end thats what she believes is her duty as a mother who loves her children even if she doesnt like them (obv not u helaena <3) and even if it causes her so much internal anguish and regret it could kill her. fake ass doomed yuri likers everywhere
- me: …🥲.. in the end… being a mother kind of the most fucked up thing in the universe… also lmfao agree that the show is trying so hard to make both rhaenyra and alicent more palatable by watering them down but sometimes u just have to stand with your cancelled queen
on a completely different note VISENYA THE CONQUEROR I LOVE YOUUUU. let me state for the record that I fully believe if anyone was the third wheel in the conquerot3 it was aegon. visenya and rhaenys cared deeply for each other. why else would visenya have tried to burn down dorne with vhagar so many times in retribution for rhaenys's death? but I believe they All felt intensely about each other even if aegon and visenya did not necessarily like each other all the time (something something similar poles of a magnet) and both probably preferred rhaenys' company (another way in which they were The Same Person), which is naturally why I find myself most compelled by the aegonvisenya arm of the trio. ofc also because of rhaenys widows club. I do not believe that visenya poisoned aenys; i think visenya was a pragmatic and calculating woman who prioritised the longevity of her family legacy so it isn't even something I would put past her and certainly she thought maegor would be the better ruler, but aenys was the son of her beloved sisterwife and even by the maesters' haterism-biased account aenys got better in her care. I don't think visenya wanted aenys dead. I think visenya was as capable of sentiment and love as she was of violence.
my targaryen 5pick in no particular order: daenerys stormborn <3 / rhaenyra i / rhaena (dreamfyre's rider) (my favourite messy lesbian whose toxic breakup small domino will eventually lead to the salvation of the world and the end of the long night big domino) / visenya the conqueror / rhaenys (meleys' rider) (i'm ideologically opposed to referring to her as the queen who never was because it makes me very sad. the queen who SHOULD HAVE BEEN)
also my fave valyrian names: aerea (#1 most beautiful valyrian name) (AND MY POOR MEOW MEOW SO MUCH) / daenerys / rhaenyra / daenaera / jacaerys / lucerys / daenys / daeron / viserra / aelor / aelora / viserys / naerys
favourite line: By the end of the year she had taken to talking to herself, and had come to have a deep aversion to the colour green.
- I wouldn't say that I "enjoyed" this line but seriously nothing else evokes essence of MY POOR ALICENTTTTT quite like this… finally breaking under the weight of all those sunk costs…
eragon / eldest – christopher paolini
chronologically this should go before the Murtagh entry lmao it just goes to show how long it's taken me to write this up. anyway about… a year ago at this point… I watched lotr for the first time with exoomcs and it ignited a deep desire to reread discount lotr (ie eragon) in me so I've been listening to the audiobooks while running. the narrator doing character voices (the irish accent just for murtagh cracks me uppp) for everyone adds a little extra note of comedy that eragon sorely needs because it takes itself much too seriously for what it is, which is a mediocre shounen power fantasy about the most special boy in the universe that follows every cliché genre convention to a tee. still I think that's kind of charming, in the same way that fourth wing is kind of charming, except at least fourth wing is self-aware and doesn't really pretend to be more than what it is, which is a poorly written romantasy about the most special girl in the universe. eragon has delusions of grandeur beyond its station and you can really tell cpaolini is under the impression he's writing epic literature with incredible prose. but it's been a fun and nostalgic experience for me overall—eragon was one of my earliest experiences with high fantasy (after deltora quest) and i credit it with kickstarting a lot of my love for the genre. unfortunately, much like my formative experience with supernatural romance was twilight, i do not have a more illustrious sffliker9000 origin story.
eragon was not really enjoyable but at least eldest was way more fun for me, i love a training montage even though eragon's magical levelup / disability cure made me roll my eyes. I will also say that the narrative trying to grapple with the Ontologically Evil Race trope by giving interiority and character dimension to the urgals was refreshing to see, although the exact same thing then happening to the ra'zac instead of the orc analogue was kind of weibolaughcry. i was pleased to see that nasuada still as onepickful as she was for me when I was 10, i enjoyed the scene where eragon swore personal fealty to her instead of the varden and the scene where she disrupted surda's economy and solved the varden's funding problems with cheap magically-woven lace. my genius and comedic queen. murtagh also still as twopickful as ever, i love cool guys who suffer and labour under the weight of a terrible legacy and I cannot wait for the murtagh/nasuada Children Of Their Fathers(tm) co-hostage doomed romance to kick in <3 cpaolini fumbled the bag with eragon/arya except for the part where he permanently separated them but murtagh/nasuada was truly a brilliant stroke of tinhet genius.
speaking of our protag eragon… he is so annoying to me... in particular i find the way he acts towards murtagh so egregious when murtagh has repeatedly put himself in harm's way to save or protect eragon and made it so clear that he has never had a choice in anything that happens to him or that he has been forced to do and whenever he does have a choice he chooses eragon. and all eragon does is repeat exactly the same pattern of prejudices that everyone else inflicts on Murtagh once they find out who he really is. you would think that eragon would have a little more sympathy once he finds out he's bearing the sins of the same father (or so he thinks) but nope. murtagh he doesn't deserve you!!! the romantic subplot with arya is also so embarrassing like oh my god you don't know her, she's repeatedly rebuffed your advances and told you that she only wants to be your comrade and friend. and you are making this soooo awkward!!! I genuinely find the lady x knight dynamic between eragon and nasuada so much more compelling, it is so overtly unromantic it loops back around to extremely heart touching and romantic, although it's not something that I would say I actively ship, except that I do, but I don't. it's quite simple actually. 4/10 for eragon, 6/10 for eldest. looking forward to my favourite chapter in all of inhericycle coming up in brisingr ie wikihow to forge a ye olde mediaeval sword.
favourite line: "Shall we dance? Friend of my heart?"
- I feel like I did not really buy eragon and saphira's one-soul-two-bodies bond until the end of eldest no matter how many times the narrative tried to tell us how much they loved each other but this finally made me smile and nod.
