Month: December 2020

book review · bookish things · books · lists

2020 Read Harder results and year-end wrap-up

kristenLeave a comment

2020 is finally coming to an end. This was one of the most miserable fucking years ever and it can piss right off. While my life wasn’t really impacted all that much by any kind of quarantine – I’m practically a shut-in in my daily life anyway – I did miss traveling. I am incredibly lucky and grateful that I have a job that allows me to work from home and that my daughter and I have remained healthy. So has my mom, though the rest of my family didn’t come through the pandemic unscathed. Everyone is doing ok so far, though, and I am happy for that. I feel terrible for the many millions of people who have lost their jobs, for the over 300,000 Americans who have lost their lives to COVID-19 (and the more than 1.6 million worldwide), and everyone who is struggling in ways large and small during this very strange and awful time. My grandmother would have said, “This, too, shall pass,” and I know she is right. Sometimes it is hard to see that, though, in the middle of events.

Of course, even the worst times have some bright points. Or, as Emperor Georgiou quoted in “Terra Firma part 2,” “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” The BEST thing has to be Biden kicking Idiot Hitler’s fat ass. A related bright point to Biden’s election is that we also get Kamala Harris as our first Madam Vice President. I can’t wait! Having a compassionate, intelligent, engaged, literate President and Vice President in office will surely be a sea change after the past obscene four years of the sub-literate, cruel, anti-science, racist, misogynist, corrupt excrescence currently squatting in the Oval Office. Can’t wait for that creature to become irrelevant again, and likely imprisoned. 

Image credit CBS All Access

For me, books and reading are always a refuge and solace. I can travel by way of books, even if I am physically stuck in Arizona. I can go to other parts of the world or to new worlds entirely. I can encounter people who are facing the same struggles I face, or I can learn more about others who face completely different challenges in their life. I always aim to read 100 books a year. According to my Goodreads Year in Books, I didn’t get to 100 this year, though if I were to add up all the articles I read for research, I would probably get to 100 books total easily. But I didn’t count articles. I’m done researching now, though, and my manuscript is in to the publisher and I hopefully never have to think much on it again! Never thought I would be sick of medieval Europe, but here we are.

RH 2020 complete

Also, as anyone who spends any time with me at all knows, I love reading challenges because they stretch my comfort zone. I love learning about authors and cultures I’ve never been exposed to before. I am passionate about supporting and amplifying the voices of women and authors of color. So to try to do all of these things, I always participate in Book Riot’s Read Harder challenge. I don’t always get through the whole list, depending on what all is happening, but I did this year! I even reviewed almost all of them. I try hard to write a review for every book I read, but sometimes I don’t get around to doing it. But at least I finished it, even WITH all the research and work I was doing to write my own book. I’m pretty proud of me. How did you do on your various reading goals this year? Mine are below the cut.books

Continue reading “2020 Read Harder results and year-end wrap-up” →

book review · sci-fi · Star Trek

Star Trek Discovery: Die Standing

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STD Die StandingStar Trek Discovery: Die Standing by John Jackson Miller (Website, Twitter)

Genre: sci-fi

Setting: spaaaaaaaaace! And some alien planets!

I read it as a(n): paperback

Source: my own collection 

Length: 403 pp

Published by: Gallery Books (14 July 2020)

Her Grace’s rating: 4 out of 5 stars

***Probably spoilers for at least season 1 of Discovery, in case someone hasn’t seen it yet.***

Die Standing recounts the events and actions of Emperor Philippa Georgiou between season 1 of Discovery and season 2 where she shows up as a Section 31 agent. Now that she’s been brought into the Prime Universe – against her will by Michael Burnham – Georgiou needs something to do. She’s recruited by Leland for Section 31 after she escapes from Qo’nos, where she was kept by L’Rell after her role in ending the Federation/Klingon War. Turns out that threatening to blow up the entire planet a) had a peacekeeping effect and b) wasn’t well-received by the Klingons. Or the Federation. However, the mission Leland sends her on, which is to track down the source of a mysterious menace that kills indiscriminately, is a test to see how she will react under pressure and under orders. Do you think that went well for Leland? If you said no, you are absolutely right!

Georgiou learns that the thing she is trying to find, a cloud-organism, can be used as a superweapon. She decides to use everything at her disposal, including a doppelganger of her assassin in the Mirror Universe and a young Emony Dax, to attain the weapon for herself and recreate her lost empire. She’s having some difficulty accepting that Lorca’s rebellion overthrew her in her universe and now she has some things to work through. In the end, though, the Prime Universe is wearing off on her and Georgiou eventually works with Dax not only to contain the superweapon but also to stop a dangerous citizen from forming a small empire of his own.

So I love Emperor Georgiou. She has zero fucks to give and she’s not shy about telling you what she thinks. She’s ruthless and scary but sometimes she does the right thing, so she has a whole potential redemption arc available. I can’t wait for the Section 31 series. I suspect she will keep them on their toes.

It was cool to see a Dax in this story as well. Here, the Trill have not yet shared that they are a joined species. Emony actively seeks to hide the fact that she is host to a symbiont. That approach was taken for a couple Trek episodes, including TNG’s “The Host.” The Trill kept it secret for a long time and it was only later, in the 24th century, that it became widely known that many individual Trill are hosts to symbionts. Their secrecy was absolutely exploited by Georgiou, because of course she figured out that Emony Dax was a joined Trill. She knows things you don’t want her to know. So it was fun to see how that part of Trill society was hidden, particularly since many of us are so familiar with and fond of Jadzia Dax and Ezri Dax. 

The character of Finnegan was also a fun addition. In the MU, he was Georgiou’s favorite henchman. He’d been lobotomized and would kill on command for her. In the Prime Universe, he was a scrappy guy who enjoyed a good barroom brawl as much as anyone but was basically kind. Definitely not a killer type. He had a long history with Admiral Cornwell, who also made several appearances. I like her character immensely. It would be awesome if someone wrote a novel of her story, including her ties to Lorca. They clearly went to the Academy together and were friends with benefits. I’d love to know that whole story.

Anyway, the entire novel was interesting in that it played on the idea of personality and redemption. Can an evil MU emperor be good? Can a good person from the Prime turn evil? Under what circumstances for each? Examining moral ambiguity and the nature of humanity is a classic Trek pastime, and JJM did a fabulous job with it. He is becoming one of my favorite Trek authors. He really captured Georgiou’s tone throughout and was quite funny at times. More, please.

book review

Humankind: A Hopeful History

kristen3 Comments

HumankindHumankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman (Website, Twitter)

Genre: nonfiction/ sociology

Setting: n/a

I read it as a(n): hardback

Source: my own collection

Length: 462 pp/time

Published by: Little, Brown (2 June 2020)

Her Grace’s rating: 5 out of 5 stars

It is hard for me to know how to review this book. I usually have a hard time reviewing nonfiction books anyway – “my favorite fact was…!” – but Humankind in particular is difficult. I am not sure how to put into words my thoughts on it or why it was one of my favorite books of 2020. But it was a book I read exactly when it was the book I needed to read. I found some parts a little too optimistic, but that might also have been my ingrained cynicism and generally dark personality giving me bad advice. I am not by nature a person who is cheerful and bubbly. Gross. 

However, the subtitle of this book is A Hopeful History, and it is a perfectly timely book for 2020, the year of the eternal garbage fire. Bregman’s premise is that humans are NOT, in fact, all terrible, and the point of his book is to show others that he is right and that the Hobbesian view of the world is inaccurate. Hobbes was the dude who said that the life of man is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Cheery. Despite almost universal belief to the contrary, Bregman lays out the studies which show that most people are basically decent, would help others in a crisis, don’t have depraved instincts, and so on. He tackles (in)famous examples of humans apparently gone feral and shows how what we thought we knew about them is most likely incorrect. 

Soldiers in wartime, for example, often never fire their guns at all, and when they do, they often shoot too high so as to miss hitting anyone on the other side. Most wartime casualties occur from a distance because of bombs and the like, not because of soldiers killing one another. 

Bregman also looked at a case from 1960s NYC in which a young woman was stabbed to death. Papers reported that her neighbors heard her cry for help but did nothing; the truth was that many of her neighbors came out to help and she died in the arms of a friend. He explains how the incorrect version of events was perpetuated and shows how it happens still in today’s mainstream media. That was a particularly interesting section. 

The discussion in Part 4 on pluralistic ignorance was especially good. Pluralistic ignorance is when individuals personally reject an idea but go along with it publicly because they incorrectly think most other people in their peer group agree with it. It is basically American society in a nutshell. Pluralistic ignorance explains a very great number of problems we seem to have, from adherence to religious faith to Republicanism to antiscience rhetoric. I keep saying if we teach logic and compassion at every level of education, we would be a much healthier society in a multitude of ways. 

Overall, this was exactly the book I needed to read to round out 2020. I will be glad when this awful year is over with, and I hope with the new year will come some better semblance of rationality in society.

bookish things · lists

Reading Women 2021

kristenLeave a comment

Heyyyy, this year I decided also to outline what I might read for the Reading Women challenge. I tend to complete that challenge most years, too, but rarely write about it. I don’t know why, especially considering how hard I try to amplify women’s voices, work, and literature. Probably it’s because many of the tasks here overlap a little with the Book Riot Read Harder challenge so I don’t focus a lot on this one in its own right. Here’s what I’m thinking of. Where possible, of course, I am going to overlap with the Read Harder tasks. Every book listed is written by a woman, which makes sense because it’s the Reading Women Challenge. 

A Book Longlisted for the JCB Prize: A Burning by Megha Majumdar, which I already own, so bonus! Or Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara sounds really good as well.

An Author from Eastern Europe: Maybe Seeing People Off by Jana Beňová. Or There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya. Eastern European literature seems really fucking long, depressing, and boring from what I can tell. These two seem tolerable. There is a reason I’ve never read War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, or The Brothers Karamazov. Is it just because it’s frigid winter for like 10 months out of the year there? Is there not enough vodka? Too much vodka? I mean, FFS, I could hardly get through The Death of Ivan Ilyich and that wasn’t too bad, relatively speaking. But by the end of it, I wanted to swim in a barrel of vodka. Is vodka made in barrels? Whatever the fuck it’s made in, I wanted to swim in it.

A Book About Incarceration: Affinity by Sarah Waters! That should be awesome. Sarah Waters is awesome.

A Cookbook by a Woman of Color: Caribbean Potluck by Suzanne and Michelle Rousseau. I will need to track down a Caribbean restaurant near me so I can also eat all the food.

A Book with a Protagonist Older than 50: Illumination Night by Alice Hoffman. I love Alice Hoffman.

A Book by a South American Author in Translation: Savage Theories by Pola Oloixarac.

Reread a Favorite Book: Jeez. So many could go here.

A Memoir by an Indigenous, First Nations, Native, or Aboriginal Woman: Heart Berries by Terese Mailhot. This has been on my radar forever. 

A Book by a Neurodivergent Author: Maybe Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis (autism) or All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (Sensory Integration Disorder). I think I own the Anders book, so probably I’ll read that.

A Crime Novel or Thriller in Translation: The Vegetarian by Han Kang. I don’t know how this is really a crime novel, but it is listed as such on the Pan Macmillan site (Our Favourite Crime Novels in Translation) and I’ve had it for ages, so I’m gonna go with that. 

A Book About the Natural World: The Long, Long Life of Trees by Fiona Safford, Rain: Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison, or To The River: A Journey Beneath the Surface by Olivia Laing. 

A Young Adult Novel by a Latinx Author: Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo.

A Poetry Collection by a Black Woman: Audre Lord seems popular, so I will try her writing. Or There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce by Morgan Parker.

A Book with a Biracial Protagonist: Caucasia by Danzy Senna. Probably there are a ton of books I will read that can cover this one, but on the off chance none of them do, I will try this one.

A Muslim Middle-Grade Novel: Shooting Kabul by NH Senzai. I got this for my daughter a while back because I wanted to read it.

A Book Featuring a Queer Love Story: Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston.

About a Woman in Politics: The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt by Kara Cooney, or maybe Nefertiti by Michelle Moran. Or, because she’s fucking awesome, The Truths We Hold by Madam Vice President Kamala Harris!

A Book with a Rural Setting: Real Queer America by Samantha Allen from my RH list can cover this. So can The Round House by Louise Erdrich. 

A Book with a Cover Designed by a Woman: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (cover design by Abby Weintraub).

A Book by an Arab Author in Translation: Women of Sand and Myrrh or Only in London, both by Hanan al-Shaykh, or Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea.

A Book by a Trans Author: Red, White, and Royal Blue will also work for this one. So will Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender

A Fantasy Novel by an Asian Author: These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong because I own it, but OMG there are so many I want to read! 

A Nonfiction Book Focused on Social Justice: When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele or White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo.

A Short Story Collection by a Caribbean Author: The Pain Tree by Olive Senior seems like a great collection. 

BONUS READS:

A Book by Alexis Wright (Waanyi Aboriginal): The Swan Book

A Book by Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwean): Nervous Conditions 

A Book by Leila Aboulela (Sundanese): The Translator

A Book by Yoko Ogawa (Japanese): The Memory Police sounds awesome. 

book review

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

kristen1 Comment

23866536Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli (Website, Twitter, Insta)

Genre: contemporary/YA

Setting: Atlanta, GA

I read it as a(n): audiobook

Narrator: Michael Crouch

Source: my own Audible collection

Length: 6:45:00

Published by: Harper Audio (7 April 2015)

Her Grace’s rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Simon Spier is a gay high school junior who isn’t out yet. He has been having an online flirtation for the past several months with another boy he knows only as Blue. Simon is usually really careful with when and where he emails Blue, but one day he got careless, accessed his email from a school computer, and before he knows it, Martin, one of his classmates, has screenshots of his emails. Martin says he won’t share the emails with the whole school IF Simon helps him get a date with Simon’s friend, Abby. Blackmailing – what can go wrong?

This was an absolutely delightful novel. I admit I don’t read a lot of LGBTQ+ literature – not because I have a problem with it at all. I don’t. It just isn’t on my radar as much, which I think is ok since I’m not really its intended audience. That said, I am actively trying to add more LGBTQ+ books into my literary diet. I also very rarely read anything remotely resembling romance, and when I do, it’s either an accident that I somehow missed in the summary that a book is a romance, or it’s for a reading challenge. But this book got so much hype that when it was the Audible daily deal, I decided to get it. It only took me like 2 years to actually get around to listening to it.

Simon reminded me of a couple guys I went to high school with. He’s friendly and witty and in the theatre club. He’s not the most popular guy in school but is far from the least popular. His best friend Nick is on the soccer team. His other best friend Leah is a kick-ass drummer. They’re the typical teenagers – generally excitable, think their parents are lame, and hyperbolic about the events of their lives. Except for Simon, he has reason to be hyperbolic. Not only does he have to worry about getting outed by Martin, but Blue’s identity is also on the line. 

When I really look at this plot, not a whole lot happens. It’s a bunch of teenagers doing teenagery things and having all the feels about it. But it is really so much more than that. The underlying theme is to challenge the status quo, to undermine the assumption that straight is the default. Simon wonders why everyone doesn’t have to come out, whether they come out as straight or gay or bi or anything else. And he’s right. Straight shouldn’t have to be the default. Cisgender shouldn’t have to be the default. We badly need a shift in the way we think of sexuality and gender identity because being so narrow in our mindset and definitions is causing real harm to real people, not just characters in a fictional book. 

If I have any gripes about this book, it’s that everything all turned out very neatly. It seemed kind of unrealistic. Simon is a good kid. Leah, Nick, and Abby are all good kids. Blue turns out to be a good kid. Even asshole Martin turns out to be a good kid in the end. Basically everyone gets the HEA ending. So it was a little too cute for me in that regard. I like dark and twisty stories, which seem more real than the perfect ending. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad things turned out well for all the kids. It just seems like it was too easy. But it didn’t stop me from giving this a 5 star rating or it being among my favorite book I read in 2020! Even with all the cuteness and teenagers.

book review · fantasy · travel

Catch-Up Round: A Cook’s Tour and The Deep

kristen1 Comment

A Cook's TourA Cook’s Tour by Anthony Bourdain

Genre: food memoir

Setting: global

I read it as a(n): paperback

Source: my own collection

Length: 274 pp

Published by: ecco (30 July 2001)

Her Grace’s rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Just like his various TV shows, this book takes readers on a global tour with Anthony Bourdain. He travels, eats, gets drunk with the locals, and writes about it, which is basically my dream job. He covered regions from Russia to Mexico, the UK to Asia, and many places in between in search of the perfect meal. 

This will be a super short review. I loved this book. I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 just because I thought the Russia section was overly long, and there were a few places where he seemed to have run out of words and kept using the same one over and over. That is bad editing, not really Tony’s fault, though. One of my favorite parts was in the Russia section, though, where he went into the frozen pool. LOL! 

I read this to complete a Read Harder task (read a food memoir about a cuisine you’ve never had before). I have had many of the cuisines in this book, but not all of them. I can honestly say I’ve never had any kind of Russian food, and some of the UK food. Though last time I was there, I did try black pudding and thought it was delicious. Anthony Bourdain is the reason I tried it. I wanted to read this book again now because I still miss him. 

The DeepThe Deep by Rivers Solomon (Website)

Genre: fantasy

Setting: the ocean deep

I read it as a(n): paperback

Source: my own collection

Length: 166 pp

Published by: Saga Press (5 Nov 2019)

Her Grace’s rating: 3 out of 5 stars

This was a super original fantasy set in the Caribbean. The Wajinru are basically mermaids, the water-breathing descendants of pregnant slaves who were thrown overboard through the Middle Passage. They live almost entirely in the present, with all their culture’s collective memories housed in one Historian. Once a year, all the Wajinru gather inside a huge room built specially for the gathering and the Historian, Yetu, passes all the memories to the other Wajinru. Yetu, though, is highly sensitive and being the receptacle of all the horrible memories of her ancestors is a burden that is killing her. She has to decide whether to leave her group and let the memories remain in the others or if she is willing to sacrifice her life for the wellbeing of her whole community. 

I did like this novella a great deal, though I found it kind of confusing in some parts. Once I got the Wajinru culture figured out, it got easier, though some of it was pretty nonlinear and threw me off a little bit. Overall, this story was complex and well-crafted, especially considering how short it is. The world-building was awesome.

bookish things · books · lists

Read Harder 2021 is here!

kristen1 Comment

For the past several years, I have eagerly awaited the posting of the new Read Harder Challenge by Book Riot. I think it was posted earlier than usual this year, which is awesome, or maybe my sense of time is just thoroughly fucked up. Either way, it’s here! And also as usual, I am going to try to complete the tasks by reading books by women and/or authors of color. Half the fun for me is to see what books are out there that can cover one or more of the tasks and make my list. Then I like to see, at the end of the year, what I actually read. 

Here is what I’ve come up with for my 2021 RH list. What books do you have on your list?

  • Read a book you’ve been intimidated to read: OK, so I don’t quite understand this. I don’t think there are any books that intimidate me. So I will read a book I have put off because it is very long and I didn’t want to take the time to read it before. I’ll go with Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Or 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. Or I could actually start AND finish Possession by AS Byatt. I’ve lost count of the times I have started and then DNF’ed that book!
  • Read a nonfiction book about anti-racism: The New Jim Crow by Michele Alexander; When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele; White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo; or How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi.
  • Read a non-European novel in translation: Untold By Night and Day by Bae Suah; or The Wandering by Intan Paramaditha (this one looks super interesting: an Indonesian sci-fi choose your own adventure!).
  • Read an LGBTQ+ history book: I’ve wanted to read Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States by Samantha Allen for a long time, so I’ll probably go with that one. 
  • Read a genre novel by an Indigenous, First Nations, or Native American author: This task was made for Stephen Graham Jones’s novels! I’ll probably read The Only Good Indians. Or the Indigenous SFF anthology I have will also cover this.
  • Read a fanfic: hello, fanfiction.net, my old friend. 
  • Read a fat-positive romance: There are more books that check this box off now than there were even just a couple years ago, which is great. I will probably do either Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade (heroine who is into fanfic and cosplay, yassss!) or There’s Something About Sweetie by Sandhya Menon. Or Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert.
  • Read a romance by a trans or nonbinary author: This one is kind of hard to track down a book that is even remotely appealing to me – I really don’t like romance. There are plenty of books by trans or nonbinary authors, and TONS of LGBT romance books, but I don’t see as many written by trans or nonbinary authors. Maybe I’m not using the right search terms. In any case, I will pick up Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston for this task. At least it’s sort of British.
  • Read a middle grade mystery: I mean, I could read Bunnicula for the millionth time. I read the fuck out of that book when I was little. And maybe I will still go ahead and read it since it has been about 30 years since I last read it. Or I could read Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty. Or Dr Who: The Secret in Vault 13 by David Solomons. Or Top Secret by John Reynolds Gardiner, another childhood favorite.
  • Read an SFF anthology edited by a person of color: Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction edited by Grace Dillon (Anishinaabe tribe). This will also work for the genre novel by an Indigenous etc task.
  • Read a food memoir by an author of color: Yes, Chef by Marcus Samuelsson, or The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty.
  • Read a work of investigative nonfiction by an author of color: I’ll probably do Adnan’s Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial by Rabia Chaudry or How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America by Moustafa Bayoumi
  • Read a book with a cover you don’t like: WTF? I think this is a repeat from a previous year. I still think it’s a weird task. I’m sure there will be one cover from the other books on my tentative list here that I’ll hate.
  • Read a realistic YA book not set in the U.S., UK, or Canada: If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan (Iran). Or Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey (New Zealand)
  • Read a memoir by a Latinx author: In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
  • Read an own voices book about disability: On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis (autism) or Not Otherwise Specified by Hannah Moskowitz (eating disorder)
  • Read an own voices YA book with a Black main character that isn’t about Black pain: The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow. Not sure how Own Voices that can possibly be since it’s SFF. Maybe American Street by Ibi Zoboi would be better. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, though I don’t think that’s YA.
  • Read a book by/about a non-Western world leader: The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt by Kara Cooney. Or Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela, Madame President by Helene Cooper, Nefertiti by Michelle Moran, or The Accidental President of Brazil by Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
  • Read a historical fiction with a POC or LGBTQ+ protagonist: I’ve never read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Or Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley.
  • Read a book of nature poems: I mean, lots of things by Mary Oliver. Also intrigued by Dear Midnight by Zack Grey, so I’ll probably go with that since poetry really isn’t my jam. At least that one is about the night and darkness, my favorite.
  • Read a children’s book that centers a disabled character but not their disability: So here’s the thing. I don’t know that you can write a book about a disabled person without their disability being part of it. It’s part of their identity, like a person’s race is. I feel that ignoring a disability or race – saying you’re blind to color, for example – totally invalidates a person’s experiences and identity surrounding that part of themselves. No, of course I don’t think a disability is the only way to define a person. But I think it’s also rude to ignore it, so I’m not going to. There are plenty of books that have disabled characters who are strong and amazing characters who are not defined by their disability. I think Rain Reign by Ann M. Martin will work. So will Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling. This site has some excellent suggestions, though, as a note to myself in case I change my mind.
  • Read a book set in the Midwest: The Round House by Louise Erdrich, which I’ve had forever and haven’t read yet. I suppose I could also read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson and see what all the fuss was about, but multigenerational sagas tend to bore the hell out of me. Yeah, I think I’ll stick with Erdrich for this one. I love her writing.
  • Read a book that demystifies a common mental illness: Turtles All the Way Down by John Green. Apparently, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman is also about mental illness. I own that one, so I’ll use this as the excuse to finally read it.
  • Read a book featuring a beloved pet where the pet doesn’t die: Let’s see. Maybe The Friend by Sigrid Nunez, The Lady by Anne McCaffrey, Dirt by Denise Orenstein, or a million other horse books for adults, please. 
book review · historical fiction

Soothsayer

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SoothsayerSoothsayer by Kathryn Amurra (Website)

Genre: historical romance

Setting: Roman city of Lugdunum (modern day Lyon, France)

I read it as a(n): ARC

Source: Helen Hollick at Discovering Diamonds 

Length: 212 pp

Published by: Kathryn Amurra/ independently published (10 May 2020)

Her Grace’s rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Set in the Roman Empire, Soothsayer is the story of Aurelia, a beloved daughter of a minor nobleman. She is determined only to marry a man she loves and her doting father agrees, allowing her to turn down several potential suitors. His death, which takes place before the book begins and thus is no spoiler, places her in an unstable situation, not just on her own behalf as an unwed young woman, but because of her brother, Angelus. Angelus is what we would consider developmentally disabled, possibly autistic, and Aurelia is desperate to prevent him being inevitably killed during the mandatory military service required of men when they turn 16. The best way to do this is for Aurelia to marry the regional governor, an old friend of her father’s, who can give Angelus a dispensation from military duty.

Sent to bring Aurelia and her unpleasant aunt to the governor’s estate is Cassius, a career military man and captain of the governor’s soldiers. He was told by a soothsayer as a child that his life would be short, so Cassius has spent his whole life to date avoiding close attachments. He figures it would be better for others not to get attached to him only to have him die young. Of course, making a plan is the best way to make the gods laugh, so Cassius finds himself in charge of Aurelia after a series of small disasters separates them from the rest of Aurelia’s retinue and sets them alone on the road to the governor’s estate. 

This novel was a delightful surprise. I chose to read it mostly because I hadn’t read anything set in the Roman Empire in a long time and I felt the urge to, despite the obvious romance elements it contains (I’m NOT a reader of romance). What I found was not the usual predictable romance but rather a very well researched story about ancient Rome that just happened to have a little romance in it. Murra set this story solidly in a historical framework and adhered to the facts we know. 

Aurelia was a complex and well-crafted character. She did not come across as shallow or frivolous, which she could easily have done considering her young age of 19. She was a mature woman by the standards of the time and she was portrayed as such on the page, a fact I highly appreciated. She was the mistress of her own household once her father died, and she took her duties seriously. Her care for her brother would probably have been a pretty rare thing for the time, when no developmental delay was really understood. Many people, including Aurelia, thought Angelus’s defects were a result of his mother’s sins. When he got into some trouble with Cassius’s soldiers, it was evident that they probably would have killed him if Aurelia and Cassius both hadn’t intervened. With that kind of society, Aurelia learns that she has to make sacrifices to save her brother from a horrible life and quick, probably brutal, death. 

The title Soothsayer is interesting considering that the soothsayer in question had a very tiny on-page presence. But the notion of fate and one’s future is prevalent throughout. Aurelia thinks it is her fate to be unhappy but she is willing to make that sacrifice on Angelus’s behalf. Cassius thinks he is fated to die young. The choices each of them makes are informed almost entirely by their interpretation of the soothsayer’s predictions. The cool thing about fate, other than how it doesn’t exist, is that you can interpret a prediction in just about any fucking way you please. Which, in this case, provides a pleasing denouement to the story 

The only thing I didn’t like was that I felt there needed to be a little more description. Murra discussed the clothes the characters wore in that she called them a palla, tunic, or toga, but there wasn’t a lot of describing what those actually looked like. Same with the buildings. Wealthy Roman houses had an atrium with some kind of catchment for collecting water, gardens, various rooms. None of these were really described. It would help bring the story even more to life if these details had more prominence. But their lack did not take away from the story very much, so maybe other readers won’t care. 

Overall, I would definitely recommend this book and would gladly read others by the same author.