Lentils... I've never eaten them, are they so good? Emily Barton seems to think so, and so, behind all the alternate timelines, historical inevitability, struggling Jewish cultures, and semi-sentient mechanical horses - she has written, truly, a book about her love for this mystical legume. Do I need to say more about The Book of Esther? Probably, and I will. But, clearly, I needed to mention the lentils. I'll get it right out of the way, The Book of Esther is about an alternate timeline that inevitably leads the Jewish peoples to have their very own country, and invite wildly strange technologies. I am not Jewish, I do not know much about anything to do with Jewish culture. BUT, that strangely kept me invested in this story. The fact that I had no idea about Jewish people, had me learning new things left and right about them. I was just as invested as I would be when it came to fictional societies, countries, and cultures. Right off the bat, I was hooked and it wasn't hard to dive right in. You won't find anything else like it out there. Emily Barton has created a thoroughly complex world, and surprisingly doesn't simply create a story where the Jewish peoples take revenge on Germany because of... history. Nope, she took the high road here. The Jewish people have a minimalist society, tribes, ranking systems rife with abuse (Esther herself seems very intent on using marriage to achieve a particular title), discrimination when it comes to refugees, non-Jewish peoples, light sexism, and the most bonkers technology you could ever imagine. Most of the time, these people have no idea how to combat the Germanii threat, their intelligence often fails due to human error, and guns are just a weapon they don't use. When it comes to tech, they use semi-sentient mechanical horses that feed off troffs of oil (what?), have their own will, and sound extremely cool, but I can't feel a bit iffy on their actual usefulness. Could you not trip a mechanical horse? What is the weight limit? Why are they sentient? Atop that you have other questionable inventions such as wooden air vehicles... I have no words. I can't even decide if these are cool, or just ridiculous. Characters, to me, can be just a little bit odd. Everyone has been part of this culture for so long that, they are completely familiar with the way it runs, and the history. Oftentimes they'll be saying Jewish phrases, and talking about things that you don't know about until later in the story. It took me a long time to get a hold on what people were thinking or talking about when they weren't dealing with the situations at hand. Everything about their country, especially Esther, is so important that everyone needs to talk about it constantly. It can be, at times, a lot to swallow and borders on exposition. Esther, the titular character can be loud, and isn't often right when it comes to everything. She likes to say what seems right, demand it from everyone, without knowing if it is. And, since her name is derived from Jewish religion, she seems intent on being someone important to her people. Therein, Esther is naive, takes on far too much, has a self-determined sense of responsibility, but ultimately she is still trying to do the right thing - not always in the right way. Her family isn't much different, and often their views on how to handle situations collide and make things very interesting. I can't say that The Book of Esther is for everyone, it requires a good deal of dedication to move past it's trickier moments. Sometimes the presumption that a reader is Jewish gets in the way, definite due to me not being Jewish, but Emily Barton always seems to find a way to explain what words mean, and what exactly is happening in her world. Moments felt loss always eventually come together. And, there really is nothing as vast in the alternate-history subgenre as this book. You will not find another book like The Book of Esther, I mean that in the best possible way. -L. BROOKS Find out more, if you're interested... The Book of Esther - Penguin/RandomHouse More about Emily Barton
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Numenera: The Night Claive releases this November. Keep an eye out if you're interested... Muad'dib bless your soul. Numenera is a franchise which includes both a pen-and-paper RPG and PC game, two things I really like. And, now, it seems that the creators have some idea about getting into novelizations - much like Dungeons and Dragons, Dragonlance, and, for a little while, Magic: The Gathering. The idea is great, I love when a franchise based on a book-contained game works to expand its universe and express the function of character classes and their places within this imagined world. Sadly sometimes the idea and vision doesn't always translate well or is handled badly by the writer at hand. I couldn't tell you which is the case with Numenera: The Night Clave, as it's co-written, apparently, by the creator, but for everything this book strives to be - it fails to do much more than be annoying. No doubt, there is a lot of passion behind this novel. A lot of attention to the details of the world, but that all falls flat as the story is utterly forgettable. It all begins with an assassination plot, of a man who may or may not be evil, or maybe he is just evil to the characters at hand. It is honestly hard to tell what the motivations or exact goings-ons are as the writing tends to be over bloated and circular in execution. If a character has even one indication of a prior event, even something as mundane as preparation, then you are immediately presented with a bulk of expository information about something else that happened, or paragraphs upon paragraphs of equipment descriptions. The first chapter took me almost an hour to read, page upon page of this - meanwhile the characters at hand have literally done nothing besides move to a position and fire. There is just way too much exposition and, sadly, things do not get better. Continuing on, viewpoints switch, and you have to deal with a character who is written in spotty sentences. For. Some. Reason. I think it’s to provide a sense of urgency, but I didn’t feel it worked at all. Not to mention, there are still expository instances abound and it’s a layered event - the same thing is still going on as before, just another character is coming to make some change in that particular instance. Worse yet, the same details are mentioned over and over again, merely paragraphs from each other: he’s about to fire the launcher, he’s going to fire the launcher, I can’t watch him firing that launcher, I got to go the guy with the launcher. As much as I want to get into this book, I’m just pulled out completely by redundancy and poor stylistic choices. Horrible writing and pacing aside, the characters are not much more than generic slates and flat, blank, characters. Perhaps this is due to the RPG being based on character creation and classes, but characters cannot just be the weapons and things they carry, or the powers they have. They need to have some real substance, and being mad at the bad guy, the only dilemma being if he’s truly good or bad, is weak at best. The setting, as well, is all over the place. Everything but the kitchen sink is thrown into the equation, and when the given writer can’t explain something, they simply say that whatever an element is, the character didn’t understand the purpose - so it just can’t be explained (didn’t stop every single other little thing from being explained). You can tell that, whomever the cover artist was, they really couldn’t get past the fatty boring chapters and instead opted to describe the setting of the first chapter. Why not, it’s there for way longer than it should be anyhow. Numenera, what a place I’d like to learn about! But I couldn’t with this book, instances of the game's mechanics are here but they are the peanut butter on a hair sandwich. Yes, that metaphor was bad - but at least you didn’t have to read about for an eternity. I’ll take the sandwich over this book any day. -L. BROOKS Within a matter of days, I devoured the story of Remy and this strange dark world he inhabits. Rather than providing a typical Aladdin-esque story-line of 'street-rat turns hero', Christina Lay has clearly went to great lengths ensuring that Symphony of Ruin's main character is both an accidental, and extremely flawed one. From the get-go, Remy sips liquor with his friends, stolen from a man who'd taken him in, and of whom he has no real appreciation; he is willing to take advantage of the people around him, blatantly lie in pursuit of reward, and is rather uncaring upon sight of the people, who'd once been his friends, lying dead from a mysterious form of attack. Because of this, Remy is constantly thrown into situations where he has to act the hero in order to ensure that he can live another day - either because of frivolous spending, leaving him unable to support himself while his master is gone, or due the fact that people are threatening him, or the money he could make. Remy is so flawed and cocksure that it's almost comedic, and he stands out as an interesting example of an accidental hero who is doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons. I rarely have comments on the individual elements of a novel (usually opting to provide my thoughts on the whole) but The City, a brooding little haunt where plagues, monster attacks, ghosts, vampire creatures, and supernatural plots seem far too common to it's residents, stands out as a character all on it's own. Life is just terrible for everyone here, even the higher ranking officials, and it's even at the point where Alchemists (basically wizards in this universe) have found a way to make a living from this fact. However, just like the main character, the dark and twisted elements of this place are portrayed in an almost comedic manner. Everyone is just so okay with others dying; the only consistent occurrence in The City being death. Why do they stay here? No person knows - even the nobility of this place are being killed off and requiring some form of exorcism due the ways they’ve been killed, sit atop magic portals to cult layers, and are victim of magical abuses. And, who will do something about this state? Not a person, unless there is a reward. Way to reflect the nature of humanity, am I right? My only gripe, besides a singular typo, is that Chapters whip from one location to another, constructed like episodes or scenes of a television show. This isn’t all bad, I still very much loved Symphony of Ruin, but it had me confused at times - having to get a read on where Remy was, who he was talking to, what was going on. Honestly, I just feel that this was a stylistic choice I don’t see often and had to get used to. Not truly a detriment to the novel. For a great, very strange, dark comedy that provides death and mystery at every turn - I suggest Symphony of Ruin. It is well written, well paced, and Christina Lay has given me one of the most interesting and fun characters I have ever had the chance of experiencing. It is entirely straight-forward and to-the-point, with no unnecessary filler, but it makes for a stress-free read. Not every fantasy novel needs to be as big as a concrete block to please, or provide a compelling or entertaining narrative. Let Symphony of Ruin be a prime example of this. -L. BROOKS For those interested... SHADOW SPINNERS - Christina Lay Symphony of Ruin - On Amazon This whole mess of an article was going to be a review of The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley, a abysmal book I'd picked up at my local dollar tree because... it looked interesting. Well, it wasn't and this piece has mutated into something terrible. It was confusing, badly paced, and worst of all: it forced social politics, gender politics, on it's readers. And, by forced, I mean it wasn't a necessary aspect of the world, it didn't change anything but the wording, it was just there to appeal to a group, but, more specifically, it was marketed towards said group. Which means that it wasn't really written in a way where the inclusion of reversed gender roles and gender fluidity work, it's just put there to sell books to certain people. Understand? No. Well, that's alright. You see the endless social war of feminism, gender fluidity, and gender defined roles has been a hot button subject for years now. Some members of these groups know what they are taking about, they can be reasonable human beings, and will debate intelligently. However, there are sadly a whole lot of extremists and ignorant individuals that rise up, usually by being brazen yet somewhat unhinged and selective in their facts and arguments, and ruin the point of these movements entirely. These more extreme individuals, who basically ruin it for everyone, are so prone to backlash and wild reactions that they become viral - allowing others to feel that, maybe because they are so prominent, that these extreme people and their extreme viewpoints, are the right way to feel. Others take the opposite approach and become just as infuriating with their warlike presentations and penchant to point everyone out as idiots for not opposing these extremists. Some of us, like me, just don't pay attention to this and we move on, and somehow we get sucked into writing articles we didn't think we'd ever write. Funny how that happens. Point is, The Mirror Empire is an example of someone appealing to a movement they don't truly understand. There is not real point in the gender roles being reversed, the females don't change what it means to say, rule, or be in a certain role. They don't make these horrifying characters be more or less just because they are female - they just are female. Males characters are constructed in a way that makes them, basically, be the meek and passive females one would see in outdated literature - presented in a way that says 'ha! how do you like that?' to male readers, basically just making the whole thing seem as immature as possible. Oh, and males get raped by females and, as a man who has went through this as a young boy, I really don't find it too shocking or in-my-face. I didn't like the concept of rape in my stories when it was happening to females either, what is with this assumption that men do? Of course, you are going to have a legion of sociopolitical extremists clinging to what it sounds like it is, what it claims to be, rather then reading the book and realizing that the whole thing is garbage. Well, if this was truly a book made to spread a message and push the apparent 'patriarchy/male supremely' out of the picture, why is the author selling the book? Clearly, and obviously, to profit off of this group. But, who knows, the fact I've found this book at a Dollar Tree clearly demonstrates that, perhaps, this group isn't as malleable as people have come to believe. I'm not saying feminism, gender fluidity, or anything like that doesn't belong in Fantasy or Science Fiction - books like Dune portray females as supremely powerful and intelligent beings, almost always more capable then any male character, but that world had a difference made because of this. If your book simply switches the roles, with no difference, and they act exactly the same then why bother. If a female is put in that role, she has a history and reason that really shows that she is right for that place within the tale - then, by all means, that character should be female. But, none of the characters in The Mirror Empire are anything but archetypes with interchanged genetalia, and this book is not made to support gender politics, it is made to make money off of them. This book is a wet pile of human refuse, fermenting in the sun. I, quite literally, tossed it in the garbage after reading it. -L. BROOKS |
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