Book 34: The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean

A book club book! This is a vampire-esque story set in modern England, only instead of them surviving on human blood, they eat--you guessed it--books! The story centers on Devon who is on her own and caring for her son, a particular kind of book eater who eats people's brains if they don't have access to a medication. The narrative alternates between following them in the present day and her childhood and young adulthood showing us how they ended up there, and the specific cultural institutions she's fighting against to survive and raise her son. 

There's also a whole plot about the women of each family being controlled and married off in order to strengthen family lines, and the difficulty they have with breeding because women can only have two (at most) children before they become infertile, and a whole lot of nonsense society construction around all of this. The narrator is well-aware of how nonsense it is, because it's not as if the patriarchy is a sensible system, but it's also not exactly an uplifting story. There was a lot to chew on (heh) in this book, but it never quite coalesced into something greater than the sum of its parts, for me.

Grade: B  

Revisiting Guy Gavriel Kay Part 1

So most years, in addition to however many new books I succeed in reading, I often reread a fair number of books. In the past I haven't logged those books on this blog, because they seemed outside the scope of this "project," but this year I've decided that I will! This is pretty easy because so far my main rereads have been of Guy Gavriel Kay's canon, leading up to his most recent release from last spring, which I still haven't read because I had wanted to do a reread of his books first.

Here are the books I've reread so far!  

The Fionavar Tapestry trilogy

Possibly the first proper high fantasy trilogy I ever read, which I did before seeing the Lord of the Rings movies and suddenly realized some of the source of his inspiration (which makes sense given the work he did with Christopher Tolkein in the 1970s). It's a portal fantasy that also brings to mind A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and after I read the Lymond Chronicles I discovered another big influence on his work (and a couple of key character types that reoccur throughout his writing). It is definitely a fantasy trilogy written in the 1980s, with some central plot arcs that I don't entirely love, but I also cry every single time I reread these books, because boy does he know what he's doing with these tropes. 

Ysabel

This one is out of publication order, but it also kind of exists on its own. It's the only novel other than the Fionavar Tapestry that takes place in our world, and I don't always buy his mid-2000s modern day POV, but it also brings together a number of his favorite themes in really effective and elegant ways. Also I desperately need to go to Aix-en-Provence. 

Tigana

The big one. His first standalone fantasy and the one he's probably still best known for in a lot of circles, the central conceit of this story is so emotionally resonant and tragically relevant. His character work in particular gets much stronger in later novels in my opinion, but this novel is plotted perfectly, even when you wish it could end in a different way. 

A Song for Arbonne

Boy this book fucked me up when I read it for the first time as a teenager. It's very much his bridge novel between high fantasy novels that are clearly set in worlds based on specific cultures and historical events, and his later novels that are historical fiction about fictionalized versions of cities and nations that also have some magical realism. This one really got to me; it's not as sweeping or just as big as either Tigana or the novel that follows it, but the central battle between a society that wants to have a public role (however flawed) possible for women and one that demonizes them and keeps them subjugated really resonated for me, and there are many scenes from this book that have stayed in my head for decades even if some of the other details had faded since my last reread. 

Next up is Lions of Al-Rassan, and let me tell you that's always a fraught read but it's not going to be easier this fall, sigh. But that's also of course one of its great strengths.

No official grade for any of these but honestly my view of all of his books is that they're just different shades of an A, so take that as read. 

Book 33: Briarley by Aster Glenn Gray

This is a lovely queer Beauty and the Beast retelling, in which the standard beauty's father ends up in the cursed house with the beast instead. It's set during the early days of WWII on the south coast of England, and the beast in this instance is actually a dragon. There's not much more to say about the plot than that; if you know the original fairytale, the queer version of it is fairly straightforward, but the writing is brisk and draws you in, and the ending satisfies. A good read for a cold evening under a blanket. 

Grade: B

Book 32: The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

Note: I know the author of this book socially. 

Man, I knew going into this book that it was going to go in directions I wasn't expecting, and boy did it. This is the final book in the Scholomance trilogy, and it also picks up immediately after the end of The Last Graduate. El has made it out of the Scholomance, and now she has to attempt to deal with the aftermath of the escape and whatever is happening outside of the Scholomance, and neither of those processes go at all how I was expecting. This trilogy engages with and subverts so many of the magical universe tropes and archetypes, and it does so knowing exactly where that should lead. There are three separate reveals in this book that made me gasp and stare off into the middle distance, and the commitment to the worldbuilding and no easy answers is really incredible and frankly rare. I loved how complicated it all is, and how satisfying I found the ending both in spite of and because of that. 

Grade: A 

Book 31: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

Note: I know the author of this book socially. 

For some reason, after I read the first book I took months and months to pick up the second one, I think in part because I knew that once I read the second one I would then immediately need to finish the trilogy, and I wanted to save it or something? I definitely end up putting off doing some things because otherwise I won't 'savor it' or something, and it's not my favorite habit! What is my favorite, however, is this book! 

The Last Graduate takes place immediately after A Deadly Education ends, so now El and her friends are in their final year in the Scholomance and are staring down the barrel of the final gauntlet. Plus the school is now attempting to kill El and a flock of freshman she's unexpectedly in charge of in all new ways, and something weird is going on with Orion!!! This book is a great example of a narrative arc following the internal logic of worldbuilding and then attempting to actually address it, with fantastic tension and development, and it's also a story that as soon as things start to feel like they're going well, you get nervous because that means a rug is about to get pulled, and boy does it. A perfect middle novel of a trilogy. 

Grade: A

Book 30: The Betrayals by Bridget Collins

As soon as I heard that there was another book written for adults by the author of The Binding, one of my favorite books that I read in 2020, I knew I had to read it. I think I went into it expecting it to feel more similar to that book than it actually is, but what definitely is similar is the way it drops you into a world that feels familiar but has distinct differences from our world and history. It is set primarily at a remote academy where young men are taught the art (and science) of the grand jeu, while the larger society around them begins to crumble. The story is told from three alternating points of view, as well as a journal belonging to Leo Martin describing his experience at the academy ten years prior as a student. 

Part of the thrill of The Binding is discovering how incomplete a version of reality you're initially shown, in wild swings of revelation. The Betrayals is more gradual; it draws you through the current day and the past, all while ruminating on the role of art and creation when basic freedoms are being sanded away. It has made me want to read Hermann Hesse, who is a noted inspiration for this novel, and it made me think a lot about the desire for the remove of an ivory tower, a place that doesn't need to concern itself with something as dirty as politics, until suddenly it does. 

Grade: A 

Book 29: The Armored Saint by Myke Cole

This is a fairly standard speculative novella about a young woman in a village who needs to find her inner Joan of Arc to stand up to oppressive strictures of the Emperor, and specifically the Order, a band of consecrated men who travel from village to village hunting out wizards. She and her father are on the road when they ride by, and they threaten her father because she doesn't want them to ruin his paper, and that sets them both on a path where they have to hide from the Order and eventually fight back. 

I enjoyed this fine while I was reading it, but the longer I sit with it after the less it lands. Heloise is described as being nearly a woman grown during the first scene, but I kept reading her as much younger, and in general something about the world building didn't quite work for me. Not a bad way to spend an evening, but there are also much better imo. 

Grade: C